He supposed that women understood each other.

And after all what had she done that was so extraordinary? She had only
put into words--sensible words--his own misgivings, his own profound
distrust of the event.

What _was_ extraordinary, if he could have analyzed it, was the calmness
that mingled with his disturbance. Calmness with regard to Winny and to
the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet
a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as
remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable
excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a
sense of mystery and of adventure.

He did not ask himself how it was that Winny had not stirred that sense
in him. He did not refer it definitely to Violet Usher. It had moved in
the air about her; but it remained when she was gone.

* * * * *

So far was he from referring it to Miss Usher that when it died down he
made no attempt to revive it by following the adventure. He was
restrained by some obscure instinct of self-preservation, also by the
absurd persistence with which in thought he returned again and again to
Winny Dymond. That recurrent tenderness for Winny, a girl who had no
sort of tenderness for him, was a thing he did not mean to encourage
more than he could help. Still, it kept him from running after any other
girl. He was not in love with Violet Usher, and so, gradually, her magic
lost its hold upon his memory.

* * * * *

Autumn came, and with it another Grand Display at the Polytechnic
Gymnasium, the grandest he had yet known. As if it had been some great
civic function, it was attended by the Mayor of Marylebone in his robes.
To be sure, the Mayor, who was "going on" that night, left some time
before the performance of Mr. J. R. F. Ransome on the Horizontal Bar.

But Ranny was not aware of the disappearance of the Mayor. He was not
perfectly aware of his own amazing evolutions on the horizontal bar. He
was not perfectly aware of anything but the face and eyes of Violet
Usher fixed on him from the side gallery above. The gallery was crowded
with other faces and with other eyes, all fixed on him; but he was not
aware of them. The gallery was for him a solitude pervaded by the
presence of Violet Usher.

She was seated in the front row directly opposite him; her arms were
laid along the balustrade, and