With a saucy glance Winnie pushed a luggage label across the table towards him. He took it up, studied it, and laid it down again without a word. "Well?" said Winnie. He spread out a pair of pudgy splay-fingered hands and shook his shock-haired head in sincere if humorous despair. "You're all heathens here, and it's no good talking to you as if you were anything else." "I'm not a heathen, but if the Church backs up the State in unjust laws----" He wagged a broad forefinger. "Even a heathen tribe has its customs. Any customs better than none! Ye can't go against the custom of the tribe for nothing. I speak as heathen to heathen." "Can't customs ever be changed?" Winnie was back at her old point. "You're not strong enough for the job, Mrs. Maxon." His voice was full of pity. But Winnie was in no mood to accept pity. "You call me a heathen. Suppose it was A.D. 50 or 100, and not A.D. 1909. I think you'd be a heathen, and I--well, at any rate I should be trying to screw up my courage to be a Christian martyr." He acknowledged a hit. "Oh, you're all very clever!" he grumbled. "I'll bet Stephen taught you that. That's from his mint, if I know the stamp! Take it as you say then--are you looking forward to your martyrdom?" Perhaps she was, and in what must be admitted to be the proper spirit--thinking more of the crown than of the stake. "I don't look very unhappy, do I?" she asked radiantly. "Going off with him to-day, are you?" She nodded gaily. The natural man suddenly asserted itself in Dennehy. He smiled. "It's more than the young dog deserves, sure it is!" "Oh, well, you're being a heathen now!" laughed Winnie, distinctly well-pleased. "I'm wondering what Mrs. Lenoir will say about it." Winnie's pleasure suffered a slight jar. "Why should Mrs. Lenoir be any judge of a case like mine?" she asked rather coldly. "Oh, I'm not making comparisons," he murmured vaguely. Still there was a point of comparison in his mind. Mrs. Lenoir, too, had been a rebel against the custom of the tribe, and, though the motives of rebellion differ, the results may be the same. "Well, I'll wish you luck anyhow," he continued, holding out his hand. "I hope he'll make you happy, for you're giving him a lot, by the powers, you are!" "I hope I'm giving anything like as much as I'm getting." He grumbled something inarticulate as he passed by her and out of the door into the garden. Winnie looked after him with a smile still on her lips. If this were the worst she had to expect, it was nothing very dreadful. It was even rather amusing; she did not conceive that she had come off in any way second-best in the encounter. Stephen came in a moment later and, on her report of Dennehy's arrival, went to look for his friend in the garden. But Dennehy was nowhere to be found; he was seen no more that day. He went straight back to London; he could not stop the deed, but he would not be an accomplice.