Winnie's eyes turned out to sea. "Tuesday, or Tuesday twelvemonth—what difference does it make?" She gave a little sigh; she had liked the idea of it—of the life it meant, of seeing the world, of a fresh start, of his great courtesy and kindness. "I don't think that we need consider ourselves responsible for a broken heart," she added suddenly.
"No, but he'd have gone on, even after you told him." Her voice took on its ironical inflexion. "He'd have gone on but for the regiment."
Winnie had been leaning back in her chair. She sat up straight, almost with a jerk. "Gone on but for what?" she asked, in a tone of genuine amazement.
Mrs. Lenoir's acrid smile penetrated the twilight. After a moment's blank staring, Winnie's parted lips met in a smile too. To both of them, in the end, it seemed funny—rather unaccountable.
"The regiment, Winnie!" Mrs. Lenoir repeated, as she rose from her seat.
"It really never entered my head," said Winnie.
CHAPTER XXIV
AN ENLIGHTENMENT
It might well seem that by now Winnie would have become accustomed to the discovery that things which had never entered her head might none the less occupy a large and unassailable position in the heads of other people—nay, that she might, for safety's sake, allow for the likelihood of such a revelation when she laid plans or embarked on a course of conduct. But, in fact, this would be asking her to have learned very early a very hard lesson. It was not as if there were only one or two of these entrenched convictions; fresh ones leapt, as it were, from ambush at every step of her advance, at every stage of her pilgrimage, and manifested a strength on which she had not calculated, for which the airy and untrammelled flight of Shaylor's Patch speculation had not prepared her. It was all very well for her to declare that she accorded to others the freedom of thought and opinion which she claimed for herself. Of course she did; but the others made such odd uses of their liberty! Maxon's point of view, Dick Dennehy's point of view, Woburn Square's point of view, Bob Purnett's point of view (his—and Godfrey Ledstone's!)—let these be taken as mastered and appreciated. Between them they had seemed to cover the ground pretty completely, to comprehend all the objections which could be raised by standards religious, social, or merely habitual. But no. Here was a man who was willing, for himself, to waive all the usual objections, but suddenly produced a new cult, an esoteric worship, a tribal fetish of his own, evidently a very powerful fetish, to be propitiated by costly sacrifices, which he regarded himself as obviously necessary, and had no doubt would be easily understood by other people.