He turned away, more stupefied than ever.
For the first time in his life he had encountered mystery. And he had no name for it.
But he had made a note of her street, and of the number of her door.
CHAPTER VIII
That night Ransome was more than ever the prey of thought, if you could call it thought, that mad racing and careering of his brain which followed his encounter with Miss Usher. The stupefaction which had been her first effect had given way to a peculiar excitement and activity of mind. When he said to himself that Miss Usher had behaved queerly, he meant that she had acted with a fine defiance of convention. And she had carried it off. She had compelled him to accept her with her mystery as a thing long known. She had pushed the barriers aside, and in a moment she had established intimacy.
For only intimacy could have excused her interference with his innermost affairs. She had given him an amount of warning and advice that he would not have tolerated from his own mother. And she had used some charm that made it impossible for him to resent it. What could well be queerer than that he should be told by a girl he did not know that his case was hopeless, that he must give up running after Winny Dymond, that he was only persecuting a girl who didn't care for him. Ransome had no doubt that she had spoken out of some secret and mystic knowledge of her friend.
He supposed that women understood each other.
And after all what had she done that was so extraordinary? She had only put into words—sensible words—his own misgivings, his own profound distrust of the event.
What was extraordinary, if he could have analyzed it, was the calmness that mingled with his disturbance. Calmness with regard to Winny and to the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a sense of mystery and of adventure.