"Oh, you've got eyes, have you? Jolly lot you see!" But she was penitent that night and asked Winny to forgive her. She implored her not to leave off coming. And Winny came and went now in pain instead of joy. Everything in Ranny's house pained her. Violet's voice that filled it pained her, and the crying of the little children. Ranny's face pained her. Most of all it pained her to see Dossie's little cot drawn up beside Ranny's bed in the back room; they looked so forlorn, the two of them; so outcast and so abandoned. She went unhindered and unheeded into Ranny's room, tidying it and putting the little girl to bed. But into Violet's room she would not go more than she could help. She hated Violet's room; she loathed it; and she dared not think why. * * * * * One Saturday evening in the last week of September Ransome had come home late after a long solitary ride in the country. Violet, who was busy making a silk blouse for herself, had refused to go with him. Winny had laid it down as a law for Ranny that Violet was never to be left for very long to herself, if he wanted her to be happy. And, of course, he wanted her to be happy. But if ever there was a moment when he could leave her with a clear conscience it was when she was dressmaking. She gave herself to it with passion, with absorption. He had known her to sit for hours over a new blouse in apparently perfect happiness. And to-day he could have sworn that she was happy. She had risen of her own accord and kissed him good-by and told him to enjoy himself and not hurry home. She would be all right, and Winny had said she would drop in for tea. He left her sewing white lace onto blue silk in a matchless tranquillity. And he _had_ enjoyed his ride, and he had not hurried home, for he knew that the children would be all right (even if Violet's happy mood had changed) as long as Winny was there to look after them. He rode far out into the open country, into the deep-dipping lanes, between fields, and through lands scented with autumn. And as he rode he was a boy again. Never since his marriage had he known such joy in freedom and such ecstasy in speed. There was a wind that drove him on, and the great clouds challenged him and raced with him as he went. He came home against the wind, but that was nothing. The wind was a challenge and a defiance of his strength; it set the blood racing in his veins, and cooled it in his face when it burned. It was good to be challenged by the wind and to defy it. It was good to struggle. It was all good that happened to him on that day.