"Nothing unusual. Why?"

"Must you go back?"

"Why?" she asked, wondering what he was driving at.

"I thought you might stay here."

"Stay here!" she gasped.

"With me--as you did in Polperro." Then, as she did not speak: "There's
no reason why you shouldn't!"

A great horror possessed Mavis. This, then, was all she had laboured
for; all he thought of her. She had believed that he would have offered
immediate marriage. His suggestion helped her to realise the
hopelessness of her situation; how, in the eternal contest between the
sexes, she had not only laid all her cards upon the table, but had
permitted him to win every trick. She fell from the summit of her
blissful anticipations into a slough of despair. She had little or no
hope of his ever making her the only possible reparation. Ruin,
disgrace, stared her in the face. And after all the fine hopes with
which she had embarked on life! Her pride revolted at this promise of
hapless degradation. Anything rather than that. There was but one way
to avoid such a fate, not only for her, but for the new life within
her. The roar and rush of the express, when she had crossed the
footbridge at the station, sounded hopefully in her ears.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't!" he repeated.

"Indeed?" she said mechanically.

"Is there? After all that's happened, what difference can it make?" he
persisted, as he reached for a cigarette.

"What difference can it make?" she repeated dully.

"Good! Dear little Mavis! Have another cigarette."

Unseen by him, she had caught up coat, gloves, and hat, and moved
towards the door. Here she had paused, finding it hard to leave him
whom she loved unreservedly for other women to caress and care for.

The words, "What difference can it make?" decided her. They spurred her
along the short, quick road which was to end in peaceful oblivion. She
opened the door noiselessly, and slipped down the stairs and out of the
front door with out being seen by any of the hotel people. Once in the
street, where a drizzle was falling, she turned to the right in the
direction of the station. It seemed a long way. She would have liked to
have stepped from the room, in which she had been with Perigal, on to
the rails before the passing express. She hurried on. Although it was
Saturday night, there were few people about, the bad weather keeping
many indoors who would otherwise be out. She was within a few paces of
the booking office when she