§ 3
Slowly the perspectives of her life were changing. The old childish ideas and prejudices ceased to apply. In the matter of George Trant, for instance....
It is curious, but the more she realized that she was not in love with him, the more she realized also his essential good nature. At one time he had been a villain of undepictable blackness, and now, in the reaction from this melodramatic ideal, he appeared perhaps more favourably than he deserved. At any rate, he was to all intents a perfectly honest, well-intentioned young fellow, slightly clever and of prepossessing manner. Whether he had changed, or whether she herself had changed, Catherine could not with certainty decide. But their attitude was fundamentally different from what it had been when Catherine had met him at Bockley Station after her domestic squall. Then he had appeared to her malignant, cruel, desirous of entrapping all innocent girls that came his way. He had been the real villain of the piece. Now it seemed incredible that she could ever have taken him so seriously. For he was a very ordinary young man. The glamour had fallen away from him—that glamour which might have made him a hero, but which, by irony of circumstances, had made him a villain instead. Catherine perceived that it was only her crude idealism that had invested him with Satanic characteristics. She had not a shred of evidence to convict him of ill-treatment of her. The famous note which he had sent her from Manchester, and which she had read on the top of a crowded tram-car, had unfortunately been sacrificed to the dramatic requirements of the situation, but Catherine, only half remembering its contents, had a feeling that if she were to read them in the perspective of several years they would seem wholly inadequate to justify the profound significance she had given them.
It was apparent now to her that George was hopeless as a villain. He said cynical things occasionally, but that was only an affectation. In reality he was a typical example of the rather superior season-ticket holder. His utmost criminality would not transcend the riding of a bicycle without a rear light....
Of course his position was immensely complicated by the fact that he had fallen in love with her....
§ 4
One day (they had met upon the platform at Upton Rising Station) she tackled him directly.
“Look here,” she said, “you remember that letter you wrote me from Manchester? You enclosed it in Helen’s letter. Do you remember it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What did you mean by it?”