A faint, half-compassionate, half-tolerant smile crept into Agatha's eyes. The mere idea that the sunny-tempered, brilliant young man whom she had given her heart to could have changed or degenerated in any way seemed absurd to her. Winifred, however, went on again.
"There's another point," she said. "If he's still the same, which isn't likely, there has certainly been a change in you. You have learned to see things more clearly, and acquired a different standard from the one you had then. One can't help growing, and as one grows one looks for more. One is no longer pleased with the same things; it's inevitable."
She broke off for a moment, and her voice grew gentler.
"Well," she added, "I've done my duty in trying to point this out to you, and now there's only another thing to say: since you're clearly bent on going, I'm going out with you."
Agatha looked astonished, but there was a suggestion of relief in her expression, for the two had been firm friends and had faced a good deal together.
"Oh," she said, "that gets over the one difficulty."
Winifred made a little whimsical gesture. "I'm not quite sure that it does. The difficulty will probably begin when I arrive in Canada, but I'm a rather capable person, and I believe they don't pay one ninepence a thousand words in Winnipeg. Besides, I could keep the books at a store or hotel, and at the very worst Gregory could, perhaps, find a husband for me. Women, one understands, are after all held in some estimation in that country. Perhaps there's a man out there who would treat even a little, plain, vixenish-tempered person with a turned-up nose decently."
Crossing the room again she banged the cover down on the typewriter, and then turned to Agatha with a wide gesture and a suggestion of haziness in her eyes.
"Anyway, I'm very tired of this one. It would all be intolerable when you went away."
Agatha stretched out a hand and drew her down beside her. She, at least, no longer feared adverse fortune and loneliness, and she was filled with a gentle compassion, for she knew how hard a fight this girl had made, and part at least of what she had borne.
"My dear," she said, "we will go together."
Then she opened the second letter, which she had forgotten in the meanwhile.