He ran, perfunctorily, through all the foolish turnings and windings of the maze. He put his hands on Winny's waist to guide her when, in her excitement, she went wrong. He linked his arm with hers when they ran locked, shoulder to shoulder, in the Great Wheel; but it was as if he held and caught, and was locked together with a child. Winny's charm was gone; and with it gone the sense of tenderness and absurdity; gone the magic and the madness of the running. For in Ranny's heart there was another magic and another madness. And it was as if Life itself had caught him and locked him with a woman in the whirling of its Great Wheel. CHAPTER IX He haunted that door in the shutter more than ever in the hope of seeing Violet Usher. Not that he wanted to haunt it. It was as if, set his feet southward as he would, they were turned back irresistibly and drawn eastward in the direction of the door. There was nothing furtive and secret in his haunting. He had a right to hang about Starker's, for he knew Miss Usher now. He had been formally introduced to her by Winny as they left the Polytechnic together, on the night of the Grand Display. Winny, preoccupied with her own performance on the parallel bars, had remained unaware of their communion in the gallery, and Violet Usher had evidently judged it best to say nothing about their previous interviews. The introducing, of course, made all the difference in the world; for Ransome, reckless as he was, respected the conventions where women were concerned. He had seen too much of the secret and furtive ways of other fellows, and he knew what their hanging about meant. It meant in nine cases out of ten that they wanted kicking badly. And Ranny would have told you gravely that, in his experience, it was the "swells" who wanted kicking most of all. The "fellows," the shop assistants, and the young clerks, like himself, were fairly decent, but sometimes they wanted kicking, too, and in any case the "flabby" way they fooled about with girls, and their "silly goats' talk" outraged Ranny. It made a girl cheap, and kept other fellows off her. It didn't give her her chance. It wasn't cricket. He was prepared to kick, personally, any fellow he found making Winny Dymond or Violet Usher cheap. Not that Winny lent herself to cheapness, but about Violet he was not quite sure. And if you had asked why not, he would have told you it was because she was so different. By which he meant so dangerously, so disastrously feminine and innocent and pretty. He knew now (she had "jolly well shown him") that Winny could take care of herself; but Violet, no; she was too impulsive, too helpless, too confiding. To think of her waiting for him like that--for a fellow she'd never met before--in Oxford Street at closing-time! How did she know that he wasn't a blackguard? Supposing it had been some other fellow? Ranny's muscles quivered as he thought of Violet's innocence and Violet's danger. All this was luminously clear to Ranny.