"Wouldn't Tora help you better than I could?"
His eyes twinkled. "I wouldn't trust Tora, and I've told her so plainly. She's so convinced of what she thinks herself that she considers the other view all nonsense—or, if she did hit on a particularly clever fellow who put the case too well against her, it's my firm belief that she'd have no scruple about suppressing him. Yours is much more the mind for me. We're inquirers, not dogmatists, you and I. With you, and a secretary learned in tongues, and a couple of typewriters, we shall make a hole in the work in no time."
Winnie could not be sure that he was not building a golden bridge for her retreat. Perhaps she did not wish to risk being made quite sure. The plan sounded so attractive. What things she would read and learn! And it was certainly possible to argue that she would still be fighting the battle of liberty and progress. After all, is it not the students who really set the line of advance? They originate the ideas, which some day or other the practical men carry out. It was Moltke who won the campaign, not the generals in the field. Such was the plea which inclination offered to persuade pride.
"But, Stephen, apart from anything else, it would mean quartering myself on you practically for ever!"
"What if it did? But, as a matter of fact, Tora thought you'd like to have your own place. You remember that cottage Godfrey had? He took it furnished; but it's to be let on lease unfurnished now, and if you liked it——"
"Oh, I shouldn't mind it. And Mrs. Lenoir has left me her furniture."
"The whole thing works out beautifully," Stephen declared. He grew a little graver. "Come and try it, anyhow. Look here—I'll take the cottage, and sublet it to you. Then you can give it up at any moment, if you get sick of it. We shall be a jolly little colony. Old Dick Dennehy's house—you remember how we put him up to it?—is almost finished, and he'll be in it in six months. Of course he'll hate the Synopsis, and we shall have lots of fun with him."
"Oh, my dear, you're good!" sighed Winnie—and a smile followed the sigh. For suddenly life and activity, comradeship and gaiety, crossed her path again. The thing was not over. It had almost seemed over—there in the lonely flat. "How is dear old Dick Dennehy?" she asked.
"We've hardly seen him—he's only been down once. He's left me to build his house for him, and says encouragingly that he doesn't care a hang what it's like. He's been settling into his new job, I suppose. After a bit, perhaps, he'll be more amiable and accessible. You'll come and give it a trial, Winnie?" He got up and came over to her. "You've done enough off your own bat," he said. "I don't quite know how to put it to you, but what I think I mean is that no single person does any good by more than one protest. Intelligent people recognize that; but if you go on, you get put down not as a Protestant, but just as an anarchist—like our poor dear old friend here, you know."
He touched, with a true and discerning hand, on one of the great difficulties. If you were burnt at the stake for conscience' sake, it was hard to question your sincerity—though it appears that an uncalled-for and wanton quest of even the martyr's crown was not always approved by the soberer heads of and in the Churches. It was far harder to make people believe or understand that what you wanted to do might seem also what it was your duty to do—that the want made the duty. Only because the want was great—a thing which must be satisfied if a human life were not to be fruitlessly wasted—did the duty become imperative. A doctrine true, perhaps, but perilous! Its professors should be above suspicion.