"That night she went off. She wrote it in that letter. She told me why
she did it, too. It was because she knew I cared for you and was afraid
I'd marry you. She wasn't going to have that. Now you know what she is."

"Why did you believe her?"

"Why, Winky, you, you little wretch, you took care of that all right."

"But, Ranny, if you cared for me, why did you marry her?"

"Because I was mad and she was mad, and we neither of us knew what we
were doing. It was something that got hold of us."

"Aren't you mad now, Ranny?"

"Rather! But I know what I'm doing all the same. I didn't know when I
married Violet."

"Don't talk as if you didn't care for her. You _did_ care."

"Of course I cared for her. But even that was different somehow. _She_
was different. Why do you bother about her?"

"I'm only wondering how you'd feel if you was to see her again."

"I shouldn't feel anything--anything at all. Seeing her would have no
more effect on me than if she was a piece of clockwork." He paused.

"I say--you're not afraid of her?" he said.

"No. I've been through all that and got over it. I'm not afraid of
anything."

"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?"

"No. I'm not afraid."

He felt her smile flicker in the darkness.

It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself
be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder.
And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and
fear.

CHAPTER XXIX

He had seen her home. At her door in the quiet Avenue he had held her in
his arms again and kissed her. Her eyes shone at his under the
lamplight.

He went back slowly, reviving the sweet sense of her.

A great calm had followed his excitement. He was sustained by an
absolute certainty of happiness. It was in his grasp, nothing could take
it from him. He would raise the rest of the money on Monday. He would
see that lawyer on Wednesday. Then he would take proceedings. Once he
had set the machinery going it couldn't be stopped. The law simply took
the thing over, took it out of his hands, and he ceased to be
responsible.

So he argued; for at the back of his mind he saw more clearly than ever
(he could not help seeing) something that might stop it all, disaster so
great, so overwhelming that when it came his affairs would be swallowed
up in it. In the face of that disaster it would be indecent of him to
have any affairs of his own, or at any rate