"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."

"That supper and keeping that cab waiting! It must have run into
pounds."

"Eh! What if it did?"

"It's wicked. Just think of the good you could have done with it."