led to the begetting of vice and
virtue as we know it."

"How was that?" asked Mavis, striving to escape from her distracting
emotions by following what Perigal was saying.

"The man with the arrow-heads hired a chap with a gift of the gab to
tell the others how wrong it was to want things someone else had
collared. That was the first lesson in morality, and the preacher,
seeing there was money in the game, started the first priesthood. Yes,
morality owes its existence to the fact of the well-to-do requiring to
be confirmed in their possessions without having to defend them by
force."

Mavis was now paying no attention to Perigal's talk: mind and heart
were in Pennington Churchyard. Perigal, thinking he was interesting
Mavis, went on:

"You mayn't think it, but a bad egg like me does no end of a lot of
good in the world, although downright criminals do more. If it weren't
for people who interfered with others' belongings, the race would get
slack and deteriorate. It's having to look after one's property which
keeps people alert and up to the mark, and, therefore, those who're the
cause of this fitness have their uses. No, my dear Mavis, evil is a
necessary ingredient of the body politic, and if it were abolished
to-morrow the race would go to 'pot.'"

Perigal said more to the same effect. Mavis was, presently, moved to
remark:

"You take the loss of the money you expected very calmly."

"No wonder!"

"No wonder?" she queried, without expressing any surprise in her voice.

"To begin with, you have it. Then I've seen you."

Mavis thought for a moment before saying:

"I suppose, as I'm another man's wife, I ought to be angry at that
remark."

"Aren't you?" he asked eagerly.

She did not reply directly; perhaps some recognition of the coldness
with which she regarded him penetrated his understanding, for he added
pleadingly:

"Don't say you don't mind because you're absolutely indifferent to me!"

"Why not?"

"Anything but that," he said, while a distressed look crept into his
eyes. "But then, if you speak the truth, you couldn't say that after
all that has--

"I'm going to speak the truth," she interrupted. "It doesn't interest
me to say anything else."

"Well?" he exclaimed anxiously.

"I don't in the least mind what you said. And I'm not in the least
offended, because, whatever you might ever say or do, it would never
interest me."

He stared at her helplessly for a few moments before saying: