These mauve envelopes began to afflict the peace, or at least the happiness, of the little household. The mornings on which they came were less cheerful than other mornings; a constraint showed itself in greetings and farewells. They were reminders--ominous reminders--of the big world outside, the world which was being defied. His family was at Godfrey Ledstone--three of his family, and one of them with a weak heart. Three weeks of the mauve envelopes did their work. One had come on the Saturday; on the Sunday morning Godfrey made an apology to Winnie. He would not be able to join her in their usual afternoon excursion--for a walk, or to a picture gallery, and so forth. "My mother's not very well--she's not strong, you know. I must go to my people's." "Of course you must, Godfrey. But--without me?" "Yes." Passing her on his way to the mantelpiece, he pressed her hand for a moment. Then he stood with his back to her, as he filled his pipe with fingers unusually clumsy. "Oh, I've tried! They've been at me for weeks--you probably guessed--and I've been back at them--letter after letter. It's no use! And yesterday father wrote that mother was really seriously upset." He turned round, and spoke almost fiercely. "Don't you see I must go, Winnie?" "Of course you must," she said again. "And I can't come if they--if they won't let me in!" She managed a smile. "It's all right. I'll have a walk by myself." He tried to find a bright side to the situation. "I may have a better chance of convincing them, if I go. I'm no good at letters. And mother is very fond of me." "Of course you must go," Winnie repeated yet again. What else was there for Winnie to say--with Mrs. Ledstone not strong and really seriously upset? "I haven't seen any of them for--oh, it must be three months--and I used to go every Sunday, when I was in town." "Well, you're going to-day, dear. That's all settled!" She went up to him and kissed him daintily. "And we won't despair of them, will we? When do you go?" "I--I generally used to go to lunch. They want me to. And come away after tea." "Well, do just what you used to. I hope I shall be doing it with you in a few weeks." "Oh, I hope so, dearest." He had not the glimmer of such a hope. To ask him if he had even the wish would have been to put an awkward question. The code wherein he was Bob Purnett's pupil recognizes quite a strict division of life into compartments. He was Winnie's lover of a certainty; quite doubtfully was he her convert. Being her lover was to break the law; being her convert was to deny it. Before he met her, he had been of the people who always contemplate conforming to the law--some day; at the proper time of life, or at the proper time before death--whichever may be the more accurate way of putting it. He was ready to say to the Tribunal, "I have done wrong"--but not to say, "You--or your interpreters--have been wrong." A very ordinary man was Godfrey Ledstone.