Winnie was at sea, but found the breeze exhilarating and was not upset by the motion. She was a responsive being, taking colour from her surroundings. A little less exaction on the part of her husband might have left her for ever an obedient wife; what a more extended liberty of thought, of action, of the exploitation of herself, might do—and end in—suggested itself in a vague dim question on this her first complete day of freedom.
At lunch Dick Dennehy could not get away from his victory at lawn-tennis. He started on an exposition of the theory of the game. He was heard in silence, till Tora Aikenhead observed in her dispassionate tones, "But you don't play at all well, Dick."
"What?" he shouted indignantly, trying to twist up a still humid moustache.
"Theory against practice—that's the way of it always," said Stephen.
"Well, in a sense ye're right there," Dennehy conceded. "It needs a priest to tell you what to do, and a man to do it."
"Let's put a 'not' in the first half of the proposition," said Ledstone.
"And a woman in the second half?" Mrs. Lenoir added.
"That must be why they like one another so much," Dennehy suggested. "Each makes such a fine justification for the existence of the other. They keep one another in work!" He rubbed his hands with a pleasantly boyish laugh.
"I always try to be serious, though it's very difficult with the people who come to my house." Stephen was hypocritically grave.
"Ye're serious because ye're an atheist," observed Dennehy.