"Well, I can't claim to know much about it, but don't some queer people come?"
"Plenty!" she laughed. "It's very amusing."
He smiled, frowned, looked, and indeed felt, a little foolish—as the average man does when he finds himself called upon to take the moral line.
"Rather—er—unsettling?" he hazarded lamely.
"Very stimulating."
"Well, I can say no more. I've done my job. Take care of yourself, Winnie."
"Oh yes, I will; you may be sure of that. Hobart, will you tell Cyril that I'm very, very sorry, and that I hope he'll be happy, and wish him splendid success and prosperity?"
"I'll tell him—if you won't write yourself."
"I couldn't. That would open it all again. I'll write to you, if there's any business to be settled."
Hobart Gaynor, thinking over the conversation on his way back to town, decided that Winnie had got on apace. Well, if she chose to take her life into her own hands, she herself must make the best of it. He did not pretend to feel quite easy—he could not get Godfrey Ledstone out of his head—but he said nothing about such apprehensions when he reported the failure of his mission. He also delivered Winnie's message to her husband. Cyril Maxon's lips set hard, almost savagely, over it. "We shall see," he said. He could not prevent her from doing what she had done, but he would not acknowledge it as setting up a permanent or recognized state of affairs. For the time disobedient, Winnie was still his wife. He would not accept her valediction. His house was still open to her and, after a decent period of penance, his heart.