"No. Mavis, it's like this." He had raised a hand to shade his eyes, as if the lamplight hurt them, and she could no longer see the expression of his face. But she observed a sudden change in his manner. He spoke now much in the same confidential tone that he had always employed in the old time when telling her of his most intimate affairs--in the happy time when he brought all his little troubles to her, and flattered her by saying that she never failed to make them easy to bear. "So far's the P.O. is concerned, all the heart has gone out of me. The events through which I've passed have altered my view of the entire affair. Where all seemed leading me on and on, and up and up, I see nothing before me now." "Promotion!" "I don't b'lieve I'd ever get it. The best I could hope for'd be that they'd leave me here to th' end o' my service life. And besides, if promotion comes tomorrow, I don't want it." "Will, let me say it at once. Take the money. I consent. Whatever you feel's best for you, that's what I want." He altogether ignored her interruption, and went on in the same tone. "I used to think it grand, and now it all seems nothing. I do assure you when I was down there handing out a halfpenny stamp or signing a two-shilling order, I used to feel large enough to burst with satisfaction. I felt 'I'm the king o' the castle.'--That was thrown in my teeth as how I appeared to others. Well, now, I feel like a brock in a barrel--or not so big as him. Just something small that's got into the wrong box by accident, and had the lid clapped to on it. I want room for my elbows, an' scope for my int'lect. I must get the sky over my head again, and the open roads under my feet. If I stopped down there much longer, I should go mad." "Then, my dear, you mustn't stop." "These last weeks--fairly determined to chuck it--I bin thinking o' the Colonies as affording advantages to any man who's got capacities in him; but now this chance comes nearer home, and it lies with you to say if you'll give me the help required for me to take it." "Yes," said Mavis, earnestly, "and more glad than words can say to think I'm able to do so."