"Let you in for it? I let you in for it! What on earth do you mean, Harry?"
"Not you chiefly. But you were in it. You kept me knowing nothing. Supposing it hadn't been Viola I fell in love with! Oh, I've learnt a lot since you and I met last. I know what men are, and I'm not different from others at bottom, though there's miles between me and them in some ways. It's Viola I owe everything to—not Granny or mother or you. I don't know how I should have lived through it if it hadn't been for her. I should have lost everything that I was." He spoke more slowly. "Viola is everything in the world to me," he said, "everything in this world or the next. I want you to understand that. I loved her before, but I love her a thousand times more, now that I know. All this—Royd, and Granny and mother—everything that it all meant to me, is nothing to me now, apart from her. Whatever there is that's real in it—I can't explain it, but it's as if she'd have to give it back to me before I can make it anything again. If you can see that, then you may be able to help a little. Viola is to come first in everything, but until it's all straightened out I want Granny—and mother—to be as little troubled about me as possible. Make it look natural to them, my going to London; don't let them think that I'm tired of them, or of Royd. I'm not, only it's all very little to me beside Viola."
"I think you're unjust to us," said Wilbraham. "Say we hadn't prepared you for what you've been through—what nobody could have foreseen."
"Oh, it would have been just the same if I'd gone straight to Sandhurst—perhaps worse—if I hadn't known Viola."
"Well, that's where you're unjust. It was only Viola—or somebody like her—that you could have fallen in love with, as you did. We'd done that for you."
Harry thought this over. Wilbraham breathed more freely the longer his silence lasted. He recognized with gratitude that old sense of fairness and reasonableness which had never been absent in his dealings with Harry. "It's what you have to think of when you feel inclined to blame your grandmother," he said.
"I don't think I'm inclined to blame her," Harry answered to this. "I'm very sorry for her. That's why I want to let her down as easily as I can. Afterwards everything will be right for her, and she'll see—she's quite wise enough—that it was right that I should take my life into my own hands. That's what I'm going to do. I had to do it once before."
"She accepted that, you know."
"Yes, in a wonderful way, I think. And she'll accept Viola. But not now. I should have to ask her for Viola, and I'm not going to do that. Besides, she's got other ideas in her head for me."
"Lady Sidney, I suppose you mean. From what your mother has written, you seem to want her to think that her wishes are being carried out."