It's all very well for me, but my converts, if any, might end by thinking they were paying too dear, while the prophet got off for nothing."
He had a book, she a newspaper. With an easy absence of ceremony he began to read; but she left her paper lying on the ground beside her, and let her thoughts play as they would on the great change which had come over her life and on what it would mean to her if it persisted, as she was resolute that it should.
"I can think – and act – for myself," she had said. Perhaps, but both would be new and strange exercises. She had walked on lines very straightly ruled; she had moved to orders peremptorily conveyed. A fear mingled with the relief of emancipation. They say that men who have been long in prison are bewildered by the great free bustling world. It may be as true of prisons of the mind as of the Bastille itself.
Stephen interrupted his reading to give another statement of his attitude. "It's like the two horses – the one in the stable-yard and the wild one. The one gets oats and no freedom, the other freedom and no oats. Now different people put very various values on freedom and on oats. And at any rate the wild horse must have fodder of some kind."
His face vanished behind the book again, and she heard him chuckling merrily over something in it. If he did not get oats, he certainly seemed to thrive excellently on such other fodder as he found. But then it was undeniable that Cyril Maxon throve equally well – successful, rising, with no doubts as to his own opinions or his own conduct. Or had her resolve shaken him into any questionings? He had shown no signs of any when she parted from him that morning. "I shall be glad to see you back at the end of your fortnight," he had said. The words were an order.
Tora Aikenhead, on her way to the rose-beds, with a basket and scissors in her hand, came up to them.
"Resting?" she asked Winnie, in her low pleasant voice.
In the telegram in which she had proposed her visit, Winnie had said that she was a little "knocked up" with the gaieties of town, but she fancied that her hostess's question referred, though distantly, to more than these, that she had discerned traces of distress, the havoc wrought by the passing of a storm.
"Beautifully!" Winnie answered, with a grateful smile.
"Dick Dennehy is week-ending with Godfrey Ledstone, and they're coming to lunch and tennis to-morrow; and Mrs. Lenoir is motoring down to lunch too," Tora went on to her husband.
"Mrs. Lenoir?" He looked up from his book with that droll twinkle behind his big spectacles again.
"Yes. Quite soon again, isn't it? She must like us, Stephen."
Stephen laughed. His wife had not in the least understood the cause of the twinkle. She would not, he reflected. It never occurred to her that any human being could object to meeting any other, unless, indeed, actual assault and battery were to be feared. But Stephen was awake to the fact that it might be startling to Winnie Maxon to meet Mrs. Lenoir – if she knew all about her. Naturally he attributed rigid standards to Mrs. Cyril Maxon, in spite of her proud avowal of open-mindedness, which indeed had seemed to him rather amusing than convincing.
"Ledstone's our neighbour," he told Winnie, "the only neighbour who really approves of us. He's taken a cottage here for the summer. You'll like him; he's a jolly fellow. Dennehy's an Irish London correspondent to some paper or other in the States, and a Fenian, and all that sort of thing, you know. Very good chap."
"Well, I asked no questions about your guests, but since you've started posting me up – who's Mrs. Lenoir?"
"Tora, who is Mrs. Lenoir?"
"Who is she? Who should she be? She's just Mrs. Lenoir."
Tora was obviously rather surprised at the question, and unprovided with an illuminating answer. But then there are many people in whose case it is difficult to say who they are, unless a repetition of their names be accepted as sufficient.
"I must out with it. Mrs. Lenoir was once mixed up in a very famous case – she intervened, as they call it – and the case went against her. Some people thought she was unjustly blamed in that case, but – well, it couldn't be denied that she was a plausible person to choose for blame. It's all years ago – she must be well over fifty by now. I hope you – er – won't feel it necessary to have too long a memory, Winnie?"
"I don't exactly see why it's necessary to tell at all," remarked Tora. "Why is it our business?"
"But Winnie does?" The question was to Winnie herself.
"I know why you told me, of course," she answered. She hesitated, blushed, smiled, and came out with "But it doesn't matter."
"Of course not, dear," remarked Tora, as she went off to her roses.
All very well to say "Of course not," but to Mrs. Cyril Maxon it was not a case of "Of course" at all. Quite the contrary. The concession she had made was to her a notable one. She had resolved to fall in with the ways of Shaylor's Patch in all possible and lawful matters – and it was not for her, a guest, to make difficulties about other guests, if such a thing could possibly be avoided. None the less, she was much surprised that Mrs. Lenoir should be coming to lunch – she had, in fact, betrayed that. In making no difficulties she seemed to herself to take a long step on the road to emancipation. It was her first act of liberty; for certainly Cyril Maxon would never have permitted it. She felt that she had behaved graciously; she felt also that she had been rather audacious.
Stephen understood her feelings better than his wife did. He had introduced himself to the atmosphere he now breathed, Tora had been bred in it by a free-thinking father, who had not Stephen's own scruples about his child. In early days he had breathed the air which up to yesterday had filled Winnie's lungs – the Maxon air.
"I suppose these things are all wrong on almost any conceivable theory that could apply to a civilized community," he remarked, "but so many people do them and go scot-free that I'm never inclined to be hard on the unfortunates who get found out. Not – I'm bound to say – that Mrs. Lenoir ever took much trouble not to be found out. Well, if people are going to do them, it's possible to admit a sneaking admiration for people who do them openly, and say 'You be hanged!' to society. You'll find her a very intelligent woman. She's still very handsome, and has really – yes, really – grand manners."
"I begin to understand why you let her down so easy," said Winnie, smiling.
He laughed. "Oh, well, perhaps you're right there. I'm human, and I dare say I did do a bit of special pleading. I like her. She's interesting."
"And nothing much matters, does it?" she put in acutely enough.
"Oh, you accuse me of that attitude? I suppose you plausibly might. But I don't admit it. I only say that it's very difficult to tell what matters. Not the same thing – surely?"
"It might work out much the same in – well, in conduct, mightn't it? If you wanted to do a thing very much, couldn't you always contrive to think that it was one of the things that didn't matter?"
"Why not go the whole hog, and think it the only proper thing to do?" he laughed.
She echoed his laugh. "You must let me down easy, as well as Mrs. Lenoir!"
"I will, fair cousin – and, on my honour, for just as good reasons."
Stephen had enjoyed his talk. It amused and interested him to see her coming, little by little, timidly, out of her – should he call it sanctuary or prison-house? – to see her delicately and fearfully toying with ideas that to him were familiar and commonplace. He marked an alertness of mind in her, especially
