"I can make friends, like other people, I suppose. I needn't bury myself."
"Yes, you can make friends fast enough! Winnie, you're avoiding the crux of the matter."
"Oh, you're back to your dangers! Well, I think I can trust myself to behave properly."
"You ought to be sure of it."
"Are you being polite?"
"Oh, hang politeness! This is a vital question for you."
The colour mounted in her cheeks; for the first time she showed some sign of embarrassment. But the embarrassment and the feelings from which it sprang—those new feelings of the last fortnight—could not make her waver. They reinforced her resolution with all the power of emotion. They made "going back" still more terrible, a renunciation now as well as a slavery. Her eyes, though not her words, had promised Godfrey Ledstone that she would not go back. What then, as Hobart Gaynor asked, was she going to do? The time for putting that question had not come. There was the pleasure now—not yet the perplexity.
She gave a vexed laugh. "Whether it's vital or not, at any rate it's a question for me, as you say yourself, and for me only. And I must risk it, Hobart. After all, there are different—well, ideas—on that sort of subject, aren't there?" Here Shaylor's Patch showed its influence again.
"I rather wish you hadn't come to this house," he said slowly.
"I've been happier here than anywhere in the world. What have you against it?"