It was getting dusk. The male part of the audience also fell away, to talk in the roads while supper was preparing. Only the vicar was left, and Captain Ambrose, and Anthony Grammont, and Pansy, who came up to talk to Kitty.
"My dear," said Pansy, "I feel absolutely flattened out by your preacher, with his talk of 'the other animals,' and organised love. Now Mr. Delmer was sweet to me—he said it ought to be free, an' I know he doesn't really think so, but only said it for my sake and Tony's. But your man's terrifyin'. I'm almost frightened to have him sleep at the End House to-night; I'm afraid he'll set fire to the sheets, he's so hot. Won't you introduce me?"
But Dixon was at this moment engaged in talking to the vicar, who, not to be daunted and brow-beaten by the notorious Stephen Dixon, was manfully expounding his position to him and Dr. Cross, while Captain Ambrose backed him up.
"They may be all night, I should judge from the look of them," said Kitty, who by now knew her clergyman and her doctor well. "Let's leave them at it and come home; Tony can bring them along when they're ready."
The End House had offered its hospitality to all the three Explainers, and they were spending the night there instead of, as usual, at the village inn. Kitty and Pansy were overtaken before they reached it by Anthony and Dr. Cross and Dixon.
Pansy said, with her sweet, ingratiating smile, "I was sayin' to Kitty, Mr. Dixon, that you made me feel quite bad with your talk about free love."
"I'm sorry," said Dixon, "but it was the vicar who talked of that, not I. I talked of organised love. I never talk of free love: I don't like it."
"I noticed you didn't," said Pansy. "That's just what I felt so bad about. Mind you, I think you're awfully right, only it takes so much livin' up to, doesn't it? with things tangled up as they are.... Sure you don't mind stayin' with us, I suppose?" She asked it innocently, rolling at him a sidelong glance from her beautiful music-hall eyes.
Dixon looked at sea. "Mind?..."
"Well, you might, mightn't you, as ours is free." Then, at his puzzled stare, "Why, Kitty, you surely told him!"