"The whole thing works out beautifully," Stephen declared. He grew a little graver. "Come and try it, anyhow. Look here--I'll take the cottage, and sublet it to you. Then you can give it up at any moment, if you get sick of it. We shall be a jolly little colony. Old Dick Dennehy's house--you remember how we put him up to it?--is almost finished, and he'll be in it in six months. Of course he'll hate the Synopsis, and we shall have lots of fun with him." "Oh, my dear, you're good!" sighed Winnie--and a smile followed the sigh. For suddenly life and activity, comradeship and gaiety, crossed her path again. The thing was not over. It had almost seemed over--there in the lonely flat. "How is dear old Dick Dennehy?" she asked. "We've hardly seen him--he's only been down once. He's left me to build his house for him, and says encouragingly that he doesn't care a hang what it's like. He's been settling into his new job, I suppose. After a bit, perhaps, he'll be more amiable and accessible. You'll come and give it a trial, Winnie?" He got up and came over to her. "You've done enough off your own bat," he said. "I don't quite know how to put it to you, but what I think I mean is that no single person does any good by more than one protest. Intelligent people recognize that; but if you go on, you get put down not as a Protestant, but just as an anarchist--like our poor dear old friend here, you know." He touched, with a true and discerning hand, on one of the great difficulties. If you were burnt at the stake for conscience' sake, it was hard to question your sincerity--though it appears that an uncalled-for and wanton quest of even the martyr's crown was not always approved by the soberer heads of and in the Churches. It was far harder to make people believe or understand that what you wanted to do might seem also what it was your duty to do--that the want made the duty. Only because the want was great--a thing which must be satisfied if a human life were not to be fruitlessly wasted--did the duty become imperative. A doctrine true, perhaps, but perilous! Its professors should be above suspicion. "It's awfully difficult," Stephen went on, stroking his forehead the while. "It's war, you see, and in any war worth arguing about both sides have a lot to say for themselves. We shall bring that out in the Synopsis." "Don't be too impartial, Stephen!" "No, I've got my side--but the other fellows shall have a fair show." His smile grew affectionate. "But I think you're entitled to come out of the fighting line and go into the organizing department--whatever it's called technically." "I'll tell you all about it some day. I'll wait a little. I seem only just to be getting a view of it."