His face clouded as he said:

"Fancy you hobn.o.bbing with those common people!"

"But I like them--the Trivetts, I mean. Whoever I knew, I should go and see them if I liked them," she declared, her old spirit a.s.serting itself.

He looked at her in surprise, to say:

"I like to see you angry; you look awfully fine when that light comes into your eyes."

"And I don't like you at all when you say I shouldn't know homely, kindly people like the Trivetts."

"May I conclude, apart from that, you like me?" he asked. "Answer me; answer me!"

"I don't dislike you," she replied helplessly.

"That's something to go on with. But if I'd known you were going to throw yourself away on farmers, I'd have hung after you myself. Even I am better than that."

"Thanks. I can do without your a.s.sistance," she remarked.

"You think I didn't come near you all this time because I didn't care?"

"I don't think I thought at all about it."

"If you didn't, I did. I was longing, I dare not say how much, to see you again."

"Why didn't you?" she asked.

"For once in my life, I've tried to go straight."

"What do you mean?"

"You're the sort of girl to get into a man's blood; to make him mad, reckless, head over ears--"

"Hadn't we better go on?" she asked.

"Why--why?"

She had not thought him capable of such earnestness.

"Because I wish it, and because this churchyard is enough to give one the blues."

"I love it, now I'm talking to you."

"Love it?" she echoed.

"First of all, you in your youth, and--and your attractiveness--are such a contrast to everything about us. It emphasises you and--and--it tells me to s.n.a.t.c.h all the happiness one can, before the very little while when we are as they."

Here he pointed to the crowded graves.

"I'm going home," declared Mavis.

"May I come as far as your door?"

"Aren't you ashamed of being seen with me?"

"I'm very, very proud, little Mavis, and, if only my circ.u.mstances were different, I should say much more to you."

His vehemence surprised Mavis into silence; it also awoke a strange joy in her heart; she seemed to walk on air as they went towards her lodging.

"What are you thinking of?" he asked presently.

"You."

"Really?"

"I was wondering why you went out of your way to give people a bad opinion of you."

"I wasn't aware I was especially anxious to do that."

"You don't go to church."

"Are you like that?"

"Not particularly; but other people are, and that's what they say."

"Church is too amusing nowadays."

"I'm afraid my sense of humour isn't sufficiently developed."

"It's the parsons I'm thinking of. Once upon a time, when people went in for deadly sins, it gave 'em something to preach about. Now we all lead proper, discreet lives, they have to justify their existence by inventing tiny sins for their present congregations."

"What sins?" asked Mavis.

"Sins of omission: any trifles they can think of that a more robust race of soul-savers would have laughed at. No. It's the parsons who empty the churches."

"I don't like you to talk like that."

"Why? Are you that way?"

"Sometimes more than others."

"I congratulate you."

She looked at him, surprised.

"I mean it," he went on. "People are much the happier for believing.

The great art of life is to be happy, and, if one is, nothing else matters."