lf. She felt as if she were
drowning in utter darkness.

"I can tell you at once that there's precious little money in bricks.
I'm fighting against big odds, and if I were worrying about you--if you
had enough to live upon and all that--I couldn't give proper attention
to business."

"It would be heaven for me," she remarked.

"So you say now. All I ask you to do is to trust implicitly in me and
wait."

"How long?" she gasped.

"I can't say for certain. It all depends."

"On what?"

"Circumstances."

She did not speak for some moments, the while she repressed an impulse
to throw herself at his feet, and implore him to reconsider his
indefinite promise.

"Will you pour me out a little whisky?" she said presently.

"What about your face? It might make it throb."

"I'll chance that."

"Aren't you well, little Mavis?" he asked kindly.

"Not very. It must be the heat of the room."

She gulped down the spirit, to feel the better for it. It seemed to
give her heart to face her misfortunes. She could say no more just
then, as a man came into the room to lay the table.

Whilst this operation was in progress, she thought of the unlooked-for
situation in which she found herself. It was not so very long since
Perigal was the suppliant, she the giver; now, the parts were reversed,
except that, whereas she had given without stint, he withheld that
which every wholesome instinct of his being should urge him to bestow
without delay.

She wondered at the reason of the change, till the words he had spoken
on the day of their jaunt to Broughton occurred to her:

"No sooner was one want satisfied than another arose to take its place.
It's a law of nature that ensures the survival of the fittest, by
making men always struggle to win the desire of the moment."

She had been Perigal's desire, but, once won, another had taken its
place, which, so far as she could see, was sea-fishing. She smiled
grimly at the alteration in his taste. Then, an idea illuminated,
possessed her mind.

"Why not make myself desirable so that he will be eager to win me
again," she thought.

So Mavis, despite the pain in her face, which owing to the spirit she
had drunk was beginning to trouble her again, set out on the most
dismal of all feminine quests--that of endeavouring to make a worldly,
selfish man pay the price of his liberty, and endure poverty for that
which he had already enjoyed to the full. With a supreme effort of
will, she