"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."