iquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had
no taste for wine; and though she liked him to order champagne because it
looked well, she never drank more than half a glass. She liked to leave
untouched a large glass filled to the brim.

"It shows the waiters who you are," she said.

Philip chose an opportunity when she seemed more than usually friendly. He
had an examination in anatomy at the end of March. Easter, which came a
week later, would give Mildred three whole days holiday.

"I say, why don't you come over to Paris then?" he suggested. "We'd have
such a ripping time."

"How could you? It would cost no end of money."

Philip had thought of that. It would cost at least five-and-twenty pounds.
It was a large sum to him. He was willing to spend his last penny on her.

"What does that matter? Say you'll come, darling."

"What next, I should like to know. I can't see myself going away with a
man that I wasn't married to. You oughtn't to suggest such a thing."

"What does it matter?"

He enlarged on the glories of the Rue de la Paix and the garish splendour
of the Folies Bergeres. He described the Louvre and the Bon Marche. He
told her about the Cabaret du Neant, the Abbaye, and the various haunts to
which foreigners go. He painted in glowing colours the side of Paris which
he despised. He pressed her to come with him.

"You know, you say you love me, but if you really loved me you'd want to
marry me. You've never asked me to marry you."

"You know I can't afford it. After all, I'm in my first year, I shan't
earn a penny for six years."

"Oh, I'm not blaming you. I wouldn't marry you if you went down on your
bended knees to me."

He had thought of marriage more than once, but it was a step from which he
shrank. In Paris he had come by the opinion that marriage was a ridiculous
institution of the philistines. He knew also that a permanent tie would
ruin him. He had middle-class instincts, and it seemed a dreadful thing to
him to marry a waitress. A common wife would prevent him from getting a
decent practice. Besides, he had only just enough money to last him till
he was qualified; he could not keep a wife even if they arranged not to
have children. He thought of Cronshaw bound to a vulgar slattern, and he
shuddered with dismay. He foresaw what Mildred, with her genteel ideas
and her mean mind, would become: it was impossible for him to marry her.
But he decided only with his reason; he felt that he must