'I felt as if a breath of icy air had blown between us, dividing us for ever. And then my aunt began to talk about you and your future.'
After some trouble I persuaded Winnie to tell me what was the homily that this aunt of hers preached _à propos_ of Frank's death. And as she talked I could not help observing what, as a child, I had only observed in a dim, semi-conscious way--a strange kind of double personality in Winnie. At one moment she seemed to me nothing but the dancing fairy of the sands, objective and unconscious as a young animal playing to itself, at another she seemed the mouthpiece of the narrow world-wisdom of this Welsh aunt. No sooner had she spoken of herself as a friendless, homeless girl, than her brow began to shine with the pride of the Cymry.
'My aunt,' said she, 'used to tell me that until disaster came upon my uncle, and they were reduced to living upon a very narrow income, he and she never really knew what love was--they never really knew how rich their hearts were in the capacity of loving.'
'Ah, I thought so,' I said bitterly. 'I thought the text was,
'No,' said Winifred firmly, 'that was not the text. She believed that the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is nestling.'
'Then what did she believe? In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what did she believe?'
'She believed,' said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes brightening as she went on, 'that of all the schemes devised by man's evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the word "love" means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is the most perfect.'
'Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love. And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?'
'She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches in our time.'
'Dreadful things! What were they, Winnie?'
'She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time. She told me that the passion of vanity--"the greatest of all the human passions," as she used to say--has taken the form of money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection, making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she would only have tried to win for her child. She told me stories--dreadful stories--about children with expectations of great wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth, and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour, family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less materialised times. She told me a thousand other things of this kind, and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on the subject.'