going slowly up the steep hill
that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon.

He had just told her that Violet had come back.

"I couldn't in common decency turn her out."

In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say
next. She saw him struggling and came to his help.

"Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said.

"What must you think of me?"

"Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her
love for him was in those words.

She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't
take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have
to take her."

"You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making
me do to you--"

"I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the
bad if we don't look after her."

"That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He
brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an
allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you."

"You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known."

"How _could_ you know?"

"I knew all the time she'd come back--some day."

"Yes. But if Father hadn't died when he did we should have been safe
married. We missed it by a day. Mercier'd have married her two years
ago. If I'd had thirty pounds then it couldn't have happened. But I was
a damned fool. I should have thought of you _then_--I should have let
everything else go and married you."

Slowly, drop by drop, he drank his misery. But she had savored sorrow so
far off that now that the cup was brought to her it had lost half its
bitterness.

"You couldn't have done different, even then, dear. Don't worry about
me. It's not as if I hadn't been happy with you. I've had
you--reelly--Ranny, all these years."

But the happiness that by way of comfort she held out to him was the
very dregs of Ranny's cup.

"That's it," he said. "I don't know how it's going to be now. She's the
same, somehow, and yet different."

It was his way of expressing the fact that Violet's suffering had given
her a soul, and that this soul, this subtler and more inscrutable
essence of her, would not necessarily be good. It might even be
malignant. Most certainly it would be hostile. It would come between
them.

"It's a good thing the children'll be at school now--out of her way."

"P'raps she's better--kinder, p'raps."