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.

But when he asked himself why, and to what end he himself desired to
cultivate her acquaintance, it was there that obscurity set in. One
thing he was sure about. He did not intend to marry her. If he couldn't
afford to marry Winny he most certainly could not afford to marry
Violet, not for years and years, so many years that you might just as
well say never, and have done with it. Violet was not the sort of girl
you could ask to wait for you years and years. His youth was not too
sanguine to divine in her the makings of a more expensive woman than
even a petty cashier could afford.

To be sure, Ranny did not enter into any sordid calculations, neither
did he think the thing out in so many words; for in this matter of
Violet Usher he was incapa