Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/235

 Craven. Life has ceased to mean anything to him without you. You follow me?"

"I don't," she confessed. "I feel absolutely giddy."

"There are only two courses open to the waiter: one is to gain his ends, the other is to fail to gain his ends. If he fails, then you would deny him the soothing alternative of suicide."

Beresford waited eagerly for her reply; but Mrs. Crisp burst in upon them.

"I've just remembered," she cried; "it was at Bournemouth, not Brighton. So relaxing. It was the year that girl ran away with a man in a car over a cliff. So romantic."

"I wonder why you always speak as if nothing mattered," said Lola, looking up at Drewitt, her head slightly on one side, her eyebrows puckered.

"Do I?" He gave her a friendly little smile that he kept for his particular friends and intimates. "Perhaps it's because I'm devoid of romance."

"But are you?" she asked seriously.

"When I read Malory or Froissart I endeavour to picture myself touring the country on a cart-horse with a long pole, like an exaggerated boy scout, engaged in the rescue of forlorn maidens and the destruction of fire-eating dragons. I confess I cannot see myself doing it."

"But you approach everything from the ridiculous aspect," she said smiling. "Those stories always thrill me."

"Because you don't see their artificiality," he