He was thinking: "I won't have Dossie and Stanny sleeping with her. And I can't turn Mother out. So there's no room for her. Yes, there is. I can get a camp bed and put it in the box room. I shall be all right in there, and she can have my room to herself." No other arrangement seemed endurable or possible to him. And yet, while his flesh cried out in the agony of its repulsion, it knew that in the years, the terrible, interminable years before them, it could not be as he had planned. There would be a will stronger than his own will that would not be frustrated. And he told himself that he could have borne it if it had not been for that. There was a knocking at the door. The handle turned, and through the slender opening which was all she dared make, Mrs. Ransome spoke to her son. "Ranny, do you know you've left the front door open? Who's that coughing?" she said. Neither of them answered. "Hasn't Winny gone yet? You shouldn't keep her out so late, dear. It's time both of you were in bed." At that he rose and went to her. * * * * * Presently they could be heard moving Stanny's little cot into his grandmother's room. That night Violet slept in Ransome's bed. Ransome lay on the sofa in the front sitting-room. He did not sleep, and at dawn he got up and looked out. The rain had ceased. It was the beginning of a perfect day. He remembered then that he had promised Winny to walk with her to Wimbledon Common. CHAPTER XXXII "She's ill. Fair gone to pieces. But the doctor says she'll soon be all right again if we take care of her." It was early evening of Sunday. They were going slowly up the steep hill that winds, westward and southward, toward the heights of Wimbledon. He had just told her that Violet had come back. "I couldn't in common decency turn her out." In a long silence he struggled to find words for what he had to say next. She saw him struggling and came to his help. "Ranny, you're going to take her back," she said. "What must you think of me?" "Think of you? I wouldn't have you different." The whole spirit of her love for him was in those words. She continued. "You see, dear, it comes to the same thing. If you didn't take her back I couldn't marry you, for it wouldn't be you. You'll have to take her." "You talk as if I'd nobody but her to think of. Look what she's making me do to you--" "I'm strong enough to bear it and she isn't. She'll go straight to the bad if we don't look after her." "That's it. She said there was nothing but the streets for her." He brooded. "If I was a rich man I could divorce her and give her an allowance to live away. I can't stand it, Winny, when I think of you." "You needn't think of me, dear. It isn't as if I hadn't known." "How _could_ you know?" "I knew all the time she'd come back--some day."