He set out to make the exploration of her; and now that she was inured to him, no longer too frightened to let him approach, now, moreover, that he had abandoned the jocular insolences of the Complete Man in favour of a more native mildness, which he felt instinctively was more suitable in this particular case, she laid no difficulties in his way. She was lonely, and he seemed to understand everything so well; in the unknown country of her spirit and her history she was soon going eagerly before him as his guide.
She was an orphan. Her mother she hardly remembered. Her father had died of influenza when she was fifteen. One of his business friends used to come and see her at school, take her out for treats and give her chocolates. She used to call him Uncle Stanley. He was a leather merchant, fat and jolly with a rather red face, very white teeth and a bald head that was beautifully shiny. When she was seventeen and a half he asked her to marry him, and she had said yes.
“But why?” Gumbril asked. “Why on earth?” he repeated.
“He said he’d take me round the world; it was just when the war had come to an end. Round the world, you know; and I didn’t like school. I didn’t know anything about it and he was very nice to me; he was very pressing. I didn’t know what marriage meant.”
“Didn’t know?”
She shook her head; it was quite true. “But not in the least.”
And she had been born within the twentieth century. It seemed a case for the text-books of sexual psychology. “Mrs. Emily X., born in 1901, was found to be in a state of perfect innocence and ignorance at the time of the Armistice, 11th November 1918,” etc.
“And so you married him?”
She had nodded.
“And then?”