"Well, you're going to-day, dear. That's all settled!" She went up to him and kissed him daintily. "And we won't despair of them, will we? When do you go?"
"I—I generally used to go to lunch. They want me to. And come away after tea."
"Well, do just what you used to. I hope I shall be doing it with you in a few weeks."
"Oh, I hope so, dearest."
He had not the glimmer of such a hope. To ask him if he had even the wish would have been to put an awkward question. The code wherein he was Bob Purnett's pupil recognizes quite a strict division of life into compartments. He was Winnie's lover of a certainty; quite doubtfully was he her convert. Being her lover was to break the law; being her convert was to deny it. Before he met her, he had been of the people who always contemplate conforming to the law—some day; at the proper time of life, or at the proper time before death—whichever may be the more accurate way of putting it. He was ready to say to the Tribunal, "I have done wrong"—but not to say, "You—or your interpreters—have been wrong." A very ordinary man was Godfrey Ledstone.
So after a solitary lunch (a sausage left cold from breakfast and a pot of tea) Winnie started on a solitary expedition. She took the train from Baron's Court to Hyde Park Corner, with the idea of enjoying the "autumn tints" along by Rotten Row and the Serpentine. But, as she walked, her thoughts were not so much on autumn tints as on Woburn Square—on that family so nearly related to her life, yet so unspeakably remote, to whom she was worse than a menace—she was a present and active curse—who to her were something wrong-headed, almost ridiculous, yet intensely formidable—really the concrete embodiment of all she had to struggle against, the thing through which the great world would most probably hit at her, wound her, and kill her if it could. And both the family and Winnie thought themselves so absolutely, so demonstrably, right! Right or wrong, she knew very well, as she walked on towards the Serpentine, that now—this instant—in Woburn Square they were trying to get her man away from her; to make him ashamed of her (he had sworn never to be), to make him throw her over, to leave her stranded, to the ridicule and ruin of her experiment. With a sudden catch in the breath she added, "And the breaking of my heart!"
Just as she came near to the lake she saw—among the walkers who had till now seemed insubstantial shades to her preoccupied mind—a familiar figure, Hobart Gaynor! Her heart leapt in sudden joy; here was an old, a sympathetic friend, the man who understood why she had done what she had. But Hobart Gaynor was not alone. His radiant and self-satisfied demeanour was justified by the fair comeliness of the girl who walked beside him—his bride, wedded to him a month ago, Cicely Marshfield. Winnie had sent him congratulations, good wishes, and a present; all of which had been cordially acknowledged in a letter written three days before the wedding. The ceremony had taken place in the country, and quietly (because of an aunt's death); no question had arisen as to who was or was not to be asked to attend it.
Her heart went out to Hobart. He had loved her; she had always been very fond of him. In her drab uneventful girlhood he had provided patches of enjoyment; in that awful married life he had now and then been a refuge. She did not know Cicely, but Hobart would surely have chosen a nice girl, one who would be a friend, who would understand it all, who could be talked to about it all? With a happy smile and a pretty blush she met Hobart and his bride Cicely. She saw him speak to her, a quick, hurried word. Cicely replied—Winnie saw the rapid turn of her head and the movement of her lips. He spoke once more—just as Winnie nodded and smiled at him, and he was raising his hand to his hat. Then came the encounter. But before it was fairly begun, Winnie's heart was turned to lead. Hobart's face was flushed; his hand came out to hers in a stiff reluctance. The tall fair girl stood so tall, so erect, looking down, bowing, not putting out a hand at all, ignoring a pathetically comic appeal in her embarrassed husband's eyes.
Winnie's eager words of congratulation, of cordiality and friendship, met with a chilly "Thank you," uttered under an obvious protest, under force majeure. Winnie set her eyes on Hobart's, but his were turned away; a rigid smile on his lips paid a ghastly tribute to courtesy.
Winnie carried the thing through as briefly as possible. She was not slow to take a cue.