The daughter of a clergyman, wife of Cyril Maxon since she was nineteen, a devout member of Attlebury's flock, she came quite fresh to the idea. In her life and her world things had seemed tremendously solid, proof against an earthquake! "I suppose it's really been the same in every age with thinking people, but it's more widespread now, isn't it? It gets into the newspapers even! 'Do we Believe?' 'Is Marriage a Failure?' It's not the answers that are most significant, you know, but the questions." "Yes, I think I see what you mean--partly." The words came in slow ruminating tones. "Do you go very far?" she went on, in accents drolly apprehensive. He laughed jovially. "There are no bombs. I'm married to Tora. Is it terrible that I don't go to church very often? Never, I'm bound to add in candour, if I can help it." "I shall go while I'm here. Do you think it funny that I should suddenly propose myself for a visit?" "To tell the truth, I didn't think Maxon would come." "Or that I should come without him?" "We pictured you pretty extensively married, I confess." "So I was--so I am, I mean." She remembered her promise; she was not to mention her great resolve. But it struck her that the pledge would be hard to keep. Already the atmosphere of Shaylor's Patch suggested that her position was eminently one to talk over, to discuss with an open-minded sympathetic friend, to speculate about in all its bearings. "But you mustn't think I'm absolutely hidebound," she went on. "I can think--and act--for myself." She was skirting the forbidden ground. "I'm glad of it. Is Maxon?" There was a humorous twinkle behind his spectacles. "Why are we to talk of Cyril when I've just begun my holiday?" Yet there was nothing else that she really wanted to talk about. Oh, that stupid promise! Of course she ought to have reserved the right to lay the case before her friends. But a promise is a promise, however stupid. That certainly would be Cyril's view; and it was hers. Was it, she wondered, the Shaylor's Patch view? Or might a question of ethics like that be to some extent "in solution"? "He thinks me an awful reprobate?" Stephen asked. She nodded, smiling. "So they do down here, but my friends in London call me a very mild specimen. I expect some of them will turn up while you're here, and you'll be able to see for yourself." "You don't mind being thought a reprobate down here?" "Why should I? I don't want their society, any more than they want mine. I'm quite well off, and I've no ambitions." He laughed. "I'm ideally placed for defying the world, if I want to. It really needs no courage at all, and would bring me no martyr's crown." "You mean it would be different if you had to work for your living?" "Might be--or if I wanted to go in for public life, or anything of that kind." "Or if you were a woman?"