Hobart Gaynor, thinking over the conversation on his way back to town, decided that Winnie had got on apace. Well, if she chose to take her life into her own hands, she herself must make the best of it. He did not pretend to feel quite easy--he could not get Godfrey Ledstone out of his head--but he said nothing about such apprehensions when he reported the failure of his mission. He also delivered Winnie's message to her husband. Cyril Maxon's lips set hard, almost savagely, over it. "We shall see," he said. He could not prevent her from doing what she had done, but he would not acknowledge it as setting up a permanent or recognized state of affairs. For the time disobedient, Winnie was still his wife. He would not accept her valediction. His house was still open to her and, after a decent period of penance, his heart. A plain case of Stephen Aikenhead's "In solution"! What to Cyril was an indissoluble relationship (and more than that), not even temporarily suspended, but rather defied and violated, was to his wife a thing now at last--by her final decision--over and done with so far as it affected her position towards Cyril himself. He was out of her life--at last. She had her life--at last. Not quite entirely free, this life she had won by her bold defiance. She still acknowledged limitations, even while she nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grew at Shaylor's Patch. Yet how incomparably more free than the old life! She was amazed to find with how little difficulty, with how slight a pang, and with how immense a satisfaction she had broken the bond--or had broken bounds, for she felt remarkably like a school-boy on a forbidden spree. What great things a little courage will effect! How the difficulties vanish when they are faced! Why, for five whole years, had she not seen that the door was open and walked out of it? Here she was--out! And nothing terrible seemed to happen. "Well, I've done it now for good and all," she said to Stephen Aikenhead. "Oh yes, you've done it. And what are you going to do next?" "Just what Hobart asked me! Why should he--or why should you? If a woman doesn't marry, or becomes a widow, you don't ask her what she's going to do next! Consider me unmarried, or, if you like, a widow." "That's all very well--excellently put. I am rebuked!" Stephen smiled comfortably and broadly. "You women do put things well. But may I observe that, if you were the sort of woman you're asking me to think about, you'd probably be living pretty contentedly with Cyril Maxon?" The point was presented plainly enough for her. She smiled reflectively. "I think I see. Yes!" "People differ as well as cases." She sat down by him, much interested. They were, it seemed, to talk about herself. "Hobart Gaynor's rather uneasy about me, I think." "And you about yourself?" "No, I'm just rather excited, Stephen." "You're a small boat--and it's a big sea."