"No, thank you."

"Then you must let me walk with you."

"There's no necessity."

"I insist. London, at this time of night, isn't the place for a plain little girl like Mavis."

"Now you're talking sense."

"I wish I thought it," he remarked bitterly.

He paid the cabman and piloted Mavis through the fog to the other side of Regent Street; they then made for Piccadilly.

"Am I going right?" he asked.

"At present," she replied, to ask, after a moment or two, "Why are you so extravagant?"

"I'm not."