After some trouble I persuaded Winnie to tell me what was the homily that this aunt of hers preached à propos of Frank's death. And as she talked I could not help observing what, as a child, I had only observed in a dim, semi-conscious way—a strange kind of double personality in Winnie. At one moment she seemed to me nothing but the dancing fairy of the sands, objective and unconscious as a young animal playing to itself, at another she seemed the mouthpiece of the narrow world-wisdom of this Welsh aunt. No sooner had she spoken of herself as a friendless, homeless girl, than her brow began to shine with the pride of the Cymry.
'My aunt,' said she, 'used to tell me that until disaster came upon my uncle, and they were reduced to living upon a very narrow income, he and she never really knew what love was—they never really knew how rich their hearts were in the capacity of loving.'
'Ah, I thought so,' I said bitterly. 'I thought the text was,
Love in a hut, with water and a crust.'
'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is nestling.'
'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what did she believe?'
'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is the most perfect.'
'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love. And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'
'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches in our time.'
'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'