"Wait a bit," he said slowly, "women always run on so fast! When I mentioned that thousand pounds, I was not thinking of giving it you, as you call it, to spend. I was thinking of that foreign investment I mentioned to you last week. If you're willing to take the risk, I might stretch a point, for if things go well that thousand pounds might easily be trebled in the course of the next two years. I'm so sure of that, that I'm quite willing to advance you, say, two hundred pounds."
He knew quite well that his proposal was utterly illogical, and bore, so to speak, no relation to the fact that the investment he was proposing might turn up trumps.
Katty's eyes sparkled. She was very fond of ready money, and it was such a long, long time since she had had any. "D'you mean you'd really give me two hundred pounds now?" she asked joyfully.
And Godfrey, with his eyes fixed on the grass, said in a shamed voice, "Yes—that is what I do mean."
Somehow it hurt him to feel how that sum of money, so trifling to him, affected her so keenly. He was better pleased with her next question.
"What sort of an investment exactly is it?"
"It's in the nature of a company promotion," he said slowly. "And of course you must regard anything I tell you about it as absolutely private."
"Yes, I quite understand that!"
He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket. "As a matter of fact I've got a few facts about it jotted down here."
She drew her chair rather nearer to his, and Godfrey Pavely, turning his narrow yet fleshy face towards her, began speaking with far more eagerness and animation than usual. Katty, who was by no means a fool where such things were concerned, listened absorbedly while he explained the rather big bit of financial business in which he was now interested.