ather's funeral.
Sunday had been given over to mourning and remorse. It was Monday
morning and the weeks following it that brought back the thought of his
divorce. They brought it back, first, in all its urgency, as a thing
vehemently and terribly desired, then as a thing, urgent indeed, but
private and personal and, therefore, of secondary importance, a thing
that must perforce stand over until the settlement of his father's
affairs, till finally (emerging from the inextricable tangle in which it
had become involved) it presented itself as it was, a thing hopeless and
unattainable.

His father's affairs were worse than anything he had believed. For,
except for that terror born of his own private superstition, he had not
really looked forward to disaster on an overwhelming scale.... He had
imagined his father's business as surviving him only for a little while,
and his father's debts as entailing perhaps strict economy for years.
But for the actual figures he was not prepared.

And how his father, limited as he was in his resources and destitute,
you would have thought, of all opportunity for wild expenditure, how he
could have contrived to owe the amount he did owe passed Ranny's
understanding.

Into that pit of insolvency there went all that was fetched by the sale
of the stock and the goodwill of the business and all that Mrs. Ransome
had put into the business, including what she had saved out of her tiny
income. As for Ranny's savings and the sum he had borrowed--the whole
thirty pounds--they went to pay for the funeral and the grave and the
monumental stone.

There could be no divorce. Divorce was not to be thought of for more
than two years, when he would have got his rise.

He broke the news to Winny, sitting with her in their little halfway
grove, the place consecrated to Ranny's confidences.

"I can't do different," he said, summing it all up.

"Of course, you can't. Never mind, dear. Let's go on as we are."

It was what Violet had said to him, but with how different a meaning!

"But Winky--it means waiting years. It'll be more than two before I can
get a divorce--and we can't marry till six months after. That's three
years. I can't bear to ask you to wait so long."

"Don't worry about me. I'm quite happy."

"You don't know how much happier you would be. Me too."

She pressed her face against his shoulder.

"I don't think I could be any happier than I am."

"You don't know," he repeated. "You d