Winnie shut Dr. Westermarck on The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas with a bang. "I'm not going to do any more at the Synopsis to-day," she announced. "It's much too fine. And what are you chuckling at, Stephen?"
With the help of Liddell and Scott, and a crib, Stephen was digesting Aristophanes' skit on Socrates. "An awful old Tory, but it's dashed good stuff. On no account work if you don't want to, Winnie. This job's not to be done in a day, you know."
It certainly was not—and least of all in one of his working days, in which the labour of research was constantly checked by the incursion of distantly related argument. Winnie could not make out how far he was in earnest about the Synopsis. Sometimes he would talk about its completion—and the consequent amelioration of society—in sanguine words, yet with a twinkle in his eye; at other moments he would declare in an apparent despair that it was properly the work of fifty men, and forthwith abandon for the day a labour impossibly Herculean. Tora maintained towards the great undertaking an attitude of serene scorn; she did not see the use of delving into dark ages in search of the light which only now, at last, was glimmering on the horizon of the future. Alice, however, was all for the Synopsis; it was to make her father famous, and itself became famous among her school-mates these many years before there was the least chance of its coming to birth. "To find out all that anyone ever said since the world began, and tell us whether it's true or not," was Alice's handsome description of the proposed work; no wonder the school-mates were impressed.
Though the 'awful old Tory' might well have seen in Shaylor's Patch a lesser Phrontisterion, to Winnie Maxon the passage of the summer months there proved a rest-cure. The tissues of brain and heart recovered. She was neither oppressed as in the days of her marriage, nor hurried from emotion to emotion as in the period of struggle which had followed her escape. Her memories—of exultation, of pain, of poignant feeling—softened in outline; becoming in some degree external to all that she had done and suffered, she was the better able to assess it and to estimate where it left her. A great gulf separated her from the woman who had fled from Cyril Maxon; yet the essential woman had passed through the flood of the gulf undrowned—with all her potentialities of life, with her spirit schooled, but not broken. This is, perhaps, to say that she had fought a drawn battle with the world; if it really came to that, it was no mean achievement.
Dick Dennehy's new house was finished—at least it wanted only its last coat of paint and, if the weather held fine, would soon be dry enough to receive it profitably. By fits and starts consignments of its necessary gear—conceived on extremely Spartan lines—arrived from London. But the master of it had himself made no appearance. Every invitation from Shaylor's Patch—and now and then the invitation amounted to an entreaty, since Tora could not for the life of her make out what he wanted done at the house—was met by protestations of absorbing work. The problem which Winnie's imagination had forecasted did not arise—or at least it exhibited no development. Dick's obstinate absence did not disprove its existence, but might be said to suspend its animation. Winnie, dwelling in the cottage where Godfrey Ledstone once abode, had a rest from the other sex; here, too, a truce was called, after her brisk series of engagements. She welcomed it; it would have seemed shallow to pass too quickly from the thought of Bertie Merriam. She neither rejected nor winced at the idea that the truce might be perpetual. With Dennehy still away, the thought of the problem died down, leaving traces only in the compassionate amusement with which she again, from time to time, reflected that he had 'got over it.' She acquiesced very willingly in the conclusion. As matters stood, life was full, pleasant, peaceful, and fruitful in the growth of her mind.
"I don't know whether you'll ever transform the world, but at least you're educating one ignorant woman, Stephen," she said.
Dr. Westermarck being finished, Stephen had, with a sudden jump, transferred her to the study of Utopias, old and new; for these, of course, must figure in the Synopsis.
"Ah, you bring some knowledge of life with you now. That makes learning ever so much easier." He smiled at her. "I really ought to go and get into some scrapes too. But there—I couldn't put my heart into the job, so it wouldn't be much use."
"Wouldn't Tora object?"
"I'm the one exception which mars the otherwise perfect harmony of Tora's conception of the male sex. She would be bound to greet any lapse on my part with scientific exultation. But, I say, I'm not going to have you burying yourself in the Synopsis."