Mr. Bouncing drank some before he returned to the subject of his wife.

"Yes," he said, "I dare say you would call her in. You're the kind of man who can make people come in when you call. I'm not. Besides, you see, she's young; she's got her life to live, and, then, ought I to have married her at all? Of course I was wonderfully well at the time; I could walk several miles, I remember, and had no fever to speak of. Still, there were the symptoms. She took the risk, of course—she was one of a large family, and I had money—but it hasn't been very amusing for her, you must admit."

Winn didn't admit it, because it seemed to him as if it had been extremely amusing for Mrs. Bouncing, a great deal more amusing than it had any right to be.

"Perhaps you think she oughtn't to have married for money," Mr. Bouncing went on when he had finished the hot milk and Winn still sat there saying nothing. "But you're quite wrong if you do. Money is the most important thing there is—next to health of course. Health and money—one's no use without the other, of course; but I don't honestly think anything else really matters. I know what the chaplain says; but he's always been quite strong."

"That's all very well," said Winn. "I'm not a religious man myself, but people oughtn't to take something for nothing. If she's married you for your money, she ought to be more with you. She's got the money, hasn't she, and what have you got? That's the way I look at it."

Mr. Bouncing did not shake his head—he was too careful for that—but he looked as if he were shaking it.

"That's one point of view, of course," he said slowly; "but how do you know I want to have her more with me? She's very young and strong. I expect she'd be exciting, and it wouldn't be at all good for me to be excited.

"Besides, she has no sense of humor. I wouldn't dream of asking her to laugh at my jokes as I do you. She wouldn't see them, and then I shouldn't like to show her the improper ones. They're not suitable for ladies, and the improper ones are the best. I sometimes think you can't have a really good joke unless it's improper."

Winn did not say anything; but he thought that however limited Mrs. Bouncing's sense of humor might be, she would have enjoyed the improper ones.

Mr. Bouncing took out his thermometer.

"It is five minutes," he said, "since I've had the glass of milk, and I think my tongue must have cooled down by now. So I shall take my temperature, and after that I shall try to go to sleep. But I don't believe you are really anxious about my wife; what you're worried about is young Rivers. I've seen you taking him for walks, and it's no use your worrying about him, because, as I've said before, he's silly. If he didn't do one silly thing, he'd do another. However, he's selfish, too. That's always something; he won't be so likely to come to grief as if he were merely silly. It's his sister I should be worried about if I were you."

"Why?" asked Winn without looking at him. Mr. Bouncing looked at Winn, but he made no answer. He had already got his thermometer in his mouth.



CHAPTER XV

Winn had a feeling that he ought to keep away from her, but Davos was an inconvenient place for keeping away. People were always turning up when one least expected them, or one turned up oneself. Privacy and publicity flashed together in the sunny air. Even going off up a mountain with a book was hardly the resource it seemed; friends skied or tobogganed down upon you from the top, and carried you off to tea.

Winn had an uneasy feeling that he oughtn't to go every morning to the rink, though that was naturally the place for a man who was only allowed to skate to find himself. It was also the place where he could not fail to find Claire. There were a good many other skaters on the rink, too; they were all preparing for the International Skating Competition.

The English, as a rule, stuck to their own rink, where they had a style of skating belonging to themselves. Their style was perpendicular and very stiff; it was by no means easy to attain, and when attained, hardly perhaps, to the observer, worth the efforts expended. Winn approved of it highly. He thought it a smart and sensible way to skate, and was by no means a bad exponent; but once he had seen Claire skating on the big rink, he put aside his abortive circling round an orange. It is difficult to concentrate upon being a ramrod when every instinct in you desires to chase a swallow. She wore, when she skated, a short, black velvet skirt, white fox furs, and a white fur cap. One couldn't very well miss seeing her. It did not seem to Winn as if she skated at all. She skimmed from her seat into the center of her chosen corner, and then looked about her, balanced in the air. When she began to skate he could not tell whether the band was playing or not, because he felt as if she always moved to music.

She would turn at first mysteriously and doubtingly, trying her edges, with little short cuts and dashes, like a leaf blown now here and now there, pushed by a draught of air, and then some purpose seemed to catch her, and her steps grew intricate and measured. He could not take his eyes from her or remember that she was real, she looked so unsubstantial, eddying to and fro, curving and circling and swooping. There was no stiffness in her, and Winn found himself ready to give up stiffness; it was terrible the amount of things he found himself ready to give up as he watched her body move like seaweed on a tide. Motion and joy and music all seemed easy things, and the things that were not easy slipped out of his mind.

After a time Maurice would join her to practise the pair-skating. He was a clever skater, but careless, and it set Winn's teeth on edge to watch how nearly he sometimes let her down. He would have let any other woman down, but Claire knew him. She counted on his not being exactly where he ought to be, hovered longer on her return strokes, pushed herself more swiftly forward to meet him, or retreated to avoid his too impulsive rushes. Winn was always glad when Maurice, satisfied with his cursory practice, left her circling alone and unfettered like a sea-gull on a cliff.

This was the time when he always made up his mind not to join her, and felt most sure that she didn't care whether he joined her or not.

He had not talked with her alone since their lunch at the Schatz Alp nearly a week ago. Every one of her hours was full, her eyes danced and laughed as usual, the secretive bloom of youth hid away from him any sign of expectation. He did not dream that every day for a week she had expected and wanted him. She couldn't herself have explained what she wanted. Only her gaiety had lost its unconsciousness; she was showing that she didn't mind, she was not, now minding. It seemed so strange that just when she had felt as if they were real friends he had mysteriously kept away from her. Perhaps he hadn't meant all the nice things he had said or all the nicer things he hadn't said at all, but just looked whenever her eyes met his? They did not meet his now; he always seemed to be looking at something else. Other men put on her skates and found her quickest on the rink, and the other men seemed to Claire like trees walking; they were no longer full of amusing possibilities. They were in the way. Then one morning Winn, watching her from a distance noticed that Maurice didn't turn up. Claire actually looked a forlorn and lonely little figure, and he couldn't make up his mind not to join her.

He skated slowly up to her.

"Well," he said, "where's Maurice? He oughtn't to be missing a good skating morning like this?" It suddenly seemed to Claire as if everything was all right again. Winn was there for her, just as he had been on the Schatz Alp; his eyes looked the same, and the intentional bruskness which he put into his voice was quite insufficient to hide its eagerness.

"Oh," she said, "Major Staines, I didn't mean to tell anybody, but I shall tell you of course. It's rather sickening, isn't it? Maurice doesn't want to go in for the competition any more; he says he can't spare the time."

"What!" cried Winn; "look here, let's sit down and talk about it." They sat down, and the music and the sunshine spread out all round them. Everything swung into a curious harmony, and left them almost nothing to be upset about. "He can't throw you over like this," Winn protested. "Why, it's only a fortnight off the day, and you're one of the tiptop skaters."

Claire did not say what she knew to be true, that people had been saying that too much to Maurice, and Maurice only liked praise that came his own way.

"I think it's Mrs. Bouncing," she said dejectedly. "He's teaching her to skate, but she'll never learn. She's been up here for years, and she doesn't know her edges! It looks awfully as if he really liked her, because Maurice skates quite well."

"I'm afraid I've been of very little use to you about Mrs. Bouncing," Winn said apologetically. "I thought Bouncing might help us, he's quite a good chap; but I'm afraid he's too down in the mouth. Still, I think I may be able to do something if things get to look really bad. Don't worry about that, please. But, by Jove! this skating matter is serious. What are you going to do about it?" Anything that stopped sport seemed to Winn to be really serious; something had got to be done about it. "Isn't there any one else up here not going in for it that you could lick into shape?"

Claire shook her head doubtfully.

"They'd have to give up every bit of their time," she explained, "and virtually hardly breathe. You see, pair-skating is really very stiff. Of course, if I got a new man, I'd do most of the figures; but he'd have to be there to catch me at the right times, and awfully steady on his edges, and waltz of course."

"What about me?" Winn asked quietly.

"I'm steady on my edges, and I can waltz after a fashion, and I'd promise not to breathe for a fortnight." He looked at her, and then looked away quickly. He was a damned fool to have offered himself! How on earth was he going to stand a fortnight with her when he could barely keep himself in hand for five minutes?

"Oh," she said, "you!"

Afterward she said a good deal more, but Winn only remembered the way she said "you," because her voice had sounded different, as if she had found something she had wanted to lay her hands on. Of course what she really wanted was to go in for the pair-skating; it was much the most fun.

They began from that moment to go in for it. Winn had to speak to Dr. Gurnet about the skating, because four hours wasn't enough, and Claire insisted upon Dr. Gurnet's consent.

Dr. Gurnet had consented, though he had raised his eyebrows and said, "Pair-skating?" and then he had asked who Major Staines had chosen for his partner. Naturally Winn had become extremely stiff, and said, "Miss Rivers," in a tone which should have put an end to the subject.

"Well, well!" said Dr. Gurnet. "And she's a woman, after all, isn't she?" Winn ignored this remark.

"By the by," he said, "my friend's coming out in about a fortnight—the one I told you about, Captain Drummond."

"I remember perfectly," said Dr. Gurnet; "a most estimable person I understand you to say. In about a fortnight? The skating competition will just be over then, won't it? I am sure I hope you and Miss Rivers will both make a great success of it."

The fortnight passed in a sunny flash. On the whole Winn had kept himself in hand. His voice had betrayed him, his eyes had betrayed him, all his controlled and concentrated passion had betrayed him; but he hadn't said anything. He had buried his head deep in the sands and trusted like an ostrich to an infectious oblivion. He reviewed his behavior on the way to the rink the day of the International.

It was an icy cold morning; the valley was wrapped in a thick blue mist. There was no sunlight yet. The tops of the mountains were a sharpened deadly white, colder than purity. As he walked toward the valley the black fir-trees on the distant heights took fire. They seemed to be lighted one by one from some swift, invisible torch, and then quicker than sight itself the sun slipped over the edge and ran in a golden flood across the mountains. The little willows by the lake-side turned apricot; the rink was very cold and only just refrozen. It was a small gray square surrounded by color. Winn was quite alone in the silence and the light and the tingling bitter air. There was something in him that burned like a secret undercurrent of fire. Had he played the game? What about that dumb weight on his lips when he had tried to tell Claire on the Schatz Alp about Estelle? He couldn't get it out then; but had he tried again later? Had he concealed his marriage? Why should he tell her anything? She wouldn't care, she was so young. Couldn't he have his bit of spring, his dance of golden daffodils, and then darkness? He really thought of daffodils when he thought of Claire. She wouldn't mind, because she was spring itself, and had in front of her a great succession of flowers; but these were the last he was going to have. There wouldn't be anything at all after Claire, and he wasn't going to make love to her. Good God! he wasn't such a beast! There had been times this last fortnight that had tried every ounce of his self-control, and he hadn't touched her. He hadn't said a word that damned yellow-necked, hen-headed chaplain's wife couldn't have heard and welcome. Would many fellows have had his chances and behaved as if they were frozen barbed-wire fences? And she'd looked at him—by Jove, she'd looked at him! Not that she'd meant anything by it; only it had been hard to have to sit on the only decent feelings he had ever had and not let them rip. And as far as Estelle was concerned, she didn't care a damn for him, and he might just as well have been a blackguard. But that wasn't quite the point, was it? Blackguards hurt girls, and he hadn't set out to hurt Claire.

Well, there was no use making any song or dance about it; he'd have to go. At first he had thought he could tell her he was married—tell her as soon as the competition was over, and stay on; but he hadn't counted on the way things grew, and he didn't think now he could tell her and then hold his tongue about what he felt. If he told her, the whole thing would be out; he couldn't keep it back. There were things you knew you could do, like going away and staying away; there were others you were a fool to try.

He circled slowly over the black ice surrounded by pink flames. It made him laugh, because he might have been a creature in hell. Yes, that was what hell was like, he had always known it—cold. Cold and lonely, when, if you'd only had a bit of luck, you might have been up somewhere in the sunlight, not alone. He didn't feel somehow this morning as if his marriage was an obstruction; he felt as if it were a shame. It hurt him terribly that what had driven him to Estelle could be called love, when love was this other feeling—the feeling that he'd like to be torn into little bits rather than fail Claire. He'd be ridiculous to please her; he'd face anything, suffer anything, take anything on. And it wasn't in the least that she was lovely. He didn't think about her beauty half as much as he thought about her health and the gentle, tender ways she had with sick people. He'd watched her over and over again, when she had no idea he was anywhere near, being nice to people in ways in which Winn had never dreamed before one could be nice. When people had nothing but their self-esteem left them, no attractions, no courage, no health, she'd just sit down beside them and make their self-esteem happy and comfortable.

She needn't have been anything but young and gay and triumphant, but she never shirked anybody else's pain. He had puzzled over her a good deal because, as far as he could see, she hadn't the ordinary rules belonging to good people—about church, and not playing cards for money, and pulling people up. It wasn't right and wrong she was thinking of most; it was other people's feelings.

He tried not to love her like that, because it made it worse. It was like loving God and Peter; it mixed him all up.

He couldn't see straight because everything he saw turned into love of her, and being with her seemed like being good; and it wasn't, of course, if he concealed things.

The icy blue rink turned slowly into gold before he had quite made up his mind what to do. Making up his mind had a good deal to do with Lionel, so that he felt fairly safe about it. It was going to hurt horribly, but if it only hurt him, it couldn't be said to matter. You couldn't have a safe plan that didn't hurt somebody, and as long as it didn't hurt the person it was made for, it could be counted a success.

Davos began to descend upon the rink, first the best skaters—Swedes, Russians, and Germans—and then all the world. The speed-skaters stood about in heavy fur coats down to their feet.

Claire came down surrounded by admirers. Winn heard her laugh before he saw her, and after he had seen her he saw nothing else. She looked like one of the fir-trees when the sun had caught it; she seemed aflame with a quite peculiar radiance and joy. She flew toward Winn, imitating the speed-skaters with one long swift stride of her skates.

"Ah," she cried, "isn't it a jolly morning? Isn't everything heavenly? Aren't you glad you are alive?"

That was the kind of mood she was in. It was quite superfluous to ask if she was nervous. She was just about as nervous as the sun was when it ran over the mountains.

"There doesn't seem to be much the matter with you this morning," said Winn, eying her thoughtfully.

The rink cleared at eleven and the band began to play.

The judges sat in different quarters of the rink so as to get the best all-around impression of the skating. The audience, muffled up in furs, crowded half-way up the valley, as if it were a gigantic amphitheater.

A Polish girl, very tall and slender, with a long black pigtail, swung out upon the ice. She caught the music with a faultless steadiness and swing. Her eyes were fixed on the mountains; her flexible hips and waist swung her to and fro as easily as a winter bird hovers balanced on its steady pinions. Out of the crowd her partner, a huge black-bearded Russian, glided toward her, caught her by the waist, lifted her, and flung her from side to side in great swirls and resounding leaps. Her skirts flew about her, her pigtail swung round her in the air, her feet struck the ice firmly together like a pair of ringing castanets. The crowd shouted applause as he caught her by the wrists after a particularly dazzling plunge into the empty air, and brought her round to face them, her fixed eyes changed and shot with triumph. The dance was over.

Then a succession of men skaters came forward, whirling, twisting, capering with flying feet. Winn watched them with more astonishment than pleasure.

"Like a ring of beastly slippery microbes!" he remarked to Claire.

"Yes," she said; "but wait." Half a dozen men and women came running out on the rink; with lifted feet, hand in hand, they danced like flying sunbeams.

Then a German pair followed the Polish. Both were strong, first-rate skaters, but the man was rough and selfish; he pulled his girl about, was careless of her, and in the end let her down, and half the audience hissed.

Swedish, Norwegian, French pairs followed swiftly after. Then Claire rose with a quickening of her breath.

"Now," she said, "you!" It was curious how seldom she said Major Staines.

Winn didn't much care to do this kind of thing before foreigners. However, it was in a way rather jolly, especially when the music warmed one's blood. He swept her out easily to the center of the ice. For a time he had only to watch her. He wondered what she looked like to all the black-headed dots sitting in the sun and gazing. In his heart there was nothing left to which he could compare her. She turned her head a little, curving and swooping toward him, and then sprang straight into the air. He had her fast for a moment; her hands were in his, her eyes laughed at his easy strength, and again she shot away from him. Now he had to follow her, in and out, to the sound of the music; at first he thought of the steps, but he soon stopped thinking. Something had happened which made it quite unnecessary to think.



He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.

Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon. They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably into one; they couldn't go wrong; they couldn't make a mistake. Where she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.

They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her heart—her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart—was in his breast, and then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn't his, that he had no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.

She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and inscrutable eyes.

"You must come and see the speed-skaters," she urged, with her hand on his arm. "It's the thing I told you about most. And I believe we've won the second prize. The Russian and Pole have got the first, of course; They were absolutely perfect, but we were rather good. Why did you rush off, and what are you looking like that for? Is anything the matter? You're not—" her voice faltered suddenly—"you're not angry, are you?"

"No, I'm not angry," said Winn, recklessly, "and nothing's the matter, and I'll go wherever you want and see what you want and do what you want, and I ran away because I was a damned fool and hate a fuss. And I see you're going to ask me if I liked it awfully. Yes, I did; I liked it awfully. Now are you satisfied?" He still hadn't said anything, he thought, that mattered.

"Oh, yes," she said slowly, "of course I'm satisfied. I'm glad you liked it awfully; I liked it awfully myself."



CHAPTER XVI

The valley of the Dischmatal lies between two rather shapeless mountains; it leads nowhere, and there is nothing in it.

Winn gave no reason for his wish to walk there with Lionel except that it was a quiet place for a talk. They had been together for twenty-four hours and so far they had had no talk. Lionel had expected to find a change in Winn; he had braced himself to meet the shock of seeing the strongest man he knew pitilessly weakened under an insidious disease. He had found a change, but not the one he expected. Winn looked younger, more alert, and considerably more vigorous. There was a curious excitement in his eyes which might have passed for happiness if he had not been so restless. He was glad to see Lionel, but that wasn't enough to account for it. Winn looked ten years younger and he had something up his sleeve.

Lionel had his own theory as to what that something might be, but he wouldn't have expected it to make Winn look younger. He couldn't help being afraid that Winn had found out Estelle. There had always been the chance that he might never find her out; he was neither reflective nor analytical, and Lionel was both. Winn might have been content simply to accept her as lovely and delightful, an ideal wife—not a companion, but a beautiful, fluttering creature to be supplied with everything it wanted. If he had done that he wouldn't have waked up to the fact that the creature gave him nothing whatever back—beyond preening its feathers and forbearing to peck. Lionel respected and loved women, so that he could afford to feel a certain contempt for Estelle, but he had always feared Winn's feeling any such emotion. Winn would condemn Estelle first and bundle her whole sex after her. Lionel hardly dared to ask him, as he did at last on their way through Dorf, what news he had of his wife.

"What news of Estelle?" Winn asked indifferently. "None particularly. She doesn't like Peter's language. My people seem to have taken to him rather, and I hear he's picked up parts of the Governor's vocabulary. It'll be jolly hearing him talk; he couldn't when I left. Estelle's taken up religion. It's funny, my mother said she would, before we were married. My mother's got a pretty strong head; Estelle hasn't, she was keen about the Tango when I left; but I dare say religion's better for her; hers is the high church kind. Up there is the valley—funny sort of place; it'll remind you of the hills—that's one reason why I brought you out here—that and the hotel being like a fly paper. Davos is like all the places where our sort of people go—fashion or disease—it don't matter a penny which—they're all over the place itself, in and out of each other's pockets, and yet get a mile or two out and nobody's in sight. Funny how people like each other. I don't like 'em, you know. I hate 'em."

In the early February afternoon the valley lay before them singularly still and white. There were no fir-trees on the sides of the abrupt snow slopes, and it took Winn some time to rediscover a faint pathway half blotted out by recent snow.

A few minutes later the road behind them vanished, everything dropped away from them but the snow, and the low gray skies. A tiny wind slipped along the valley; it was strange not to see it, for it felt like the push of a Presence, in the breathless solitude. A long way off Lionel could hear a faint noise like the sound of some one choking.

It reminded him of the sound behind the green baize doors in the hotel. It was just such a sound, suppressed, faint, but quite audible, that he heard along the passages at night. He looked questioningly at Winn.

"That's a waterfall," said Winn; "most of it's frozen up but it leaks through a little. There's a story about this place—I didn't mention it to you before, did I?"

Lionel shook his head. Winn was not in the habit of telling him stories about places. He had informed Lionel on one occasion some years ago, that he thought legends too fanciful, unless they were in the Bible, which was probably true, and none of our business. But Lionel had already wondered if this change in Winn wasn't on the whole making him more fanciful.

"I dare say," Winn began, "there's not a word of truth in it, and it's perfectly pointless besides; still it's a queer place, this valley, and what's particularly odd is, that though you can find it easily enough sometimes, there are days when I'm blessed if it's there at all! Anyhow I've gone wrong times out of number when I've looked for it, and you know I don't usually go wrong about finding places. This is the middle one of three valleys, count 'em backwards or forwards, whichever way you like—but I give you my word, after you've passed the first, and take the second turn, you'll find yourself in the third valley—or take it the other way, you'll be in the first. It's made me jumpy before now, looking for it. However, that hasn't anything to do with the story, such as it is.

"They say that on New Year's eve, all the dead that have died in Davos (there must be a jolly lot of 'em when you come to think of it) process through the valley to the Waterfall. What their object is, of course, the story doesn't mention—ghosts, as far as I can see, never have much object, except to make you sit up; but they set out anyhow, scores and scores of 'em.

"If it happens to be moonlight, you can see them slipping over the snow, making for the waterfall as fast as they can hoof it, but none of them look back—and if they were all your dearest friends you couldn't catch a glimpse of their faces—unless, I suppose, you had the gumption to start off by sitting up at the waterfall and waiting for 'em—which nobody has, of course. The point of the story, if you can call it a point, is that the last man in the procession isn't dead at all. He's a sort of false spook of the living—taking his first turn in with them—because as sure as fate he dies before the next year's out, and when the other chaps have reached the waterfall, he stops short and looks back toward Davos—that's how he's been spotted, and he's always died all right before the end of the year. Rum tale, isn't it?"

"How did you get hold of it?" Lionel asked curiously. "It's not much in your line, is it?"

"Well—I don't know," said Winn, taking out his pipe and preparing to light it. "The last six months or so, I've thought a lot of funny things. I came up here prepared to die; that's to say, I thought I'd got to, which is as far as you can prepare for most things, but I'm not going to die, as I told you yesterday, but what I didn't mention to you then was that, on the whole, as it happens now, I'd jolly well rather."

"You mean," said Lionel, "that it's got too thick between you and Estelle? I wish you'd tell me, old chap. I haven't an idea how it stands, but I've been afraid ever since I stayed with you, that you'd made a bit of a mistake over your marriage?"

"As far as that goes," said Winn, "I swallowed that down all right. It's no use bothering about a thing that isn't there. It's what is that counts. It counts damnably, I can tell you that. Look here, have you ever had any ideas about love?"

"I can't say that I have," Lionel admitted cautiously. "Many. I dare say I should like it if it came; and I've had fancies for girls, of course, but nothing so far I couldn't walk off, not what people call the real thing, I suppose. I've always liked women more than you have, and I don't think you get let in so much if you honestly like 'em. I haven't seen any one I particularly want to marry yet, if that's what you mean?"

"That's part of it," agreed Winn. "I supposed you'd been like that. I shouldn't wonder if what you say about liking 'em being safer, isn't true. I never liked 'em. I've taken what I could get when I wanted it. I rather wish I hadn't now, but I can't say I was ever sorry before. Even—Estelle—well, I don't want to be nasty about her—but it was only different, I can see that now, because I knew I couldn't get what I wanted without marrying her—still—I somehow think I'd made a kind of a start that time—only I got pulled up too short. I dare say I quite deserved it. That's no way of liking a woman. When you do really, you know all the rest's been half twaddle and half greed. Your father and mother are all right—so are mine really, though they do blow each other's heads off—still, there's something there—you know what I mean?"

"Something indestructible and uniting—" said Lionel quietly. "I've often wondered about it."

"Well, I've never wondered about it," said Winn, firmly, "and I'm not going to begin now. Still, I admit it's there. What I'm getting at is that there's something I want you to do for me. You'll probably think I'm mad, but I can't help that. It'll work out all right in the end, if you'll do it."

"You can ask me anything you like," said Lionel, quietly; "any damned thing. I don't suppose I'll refuse to do it."

The water broke into a prolonged gurgle under their feet; it sounded uncannily like some derisive listener. There was nothing in sight at all—not even their shadows on the unlighted snows.

"Well—there's a girl here," Winn said in a low voice; "it's not very easy to explain. I haven't told her about Estelle; I meant to, but I couldn't. I'm afraid you'll think I haven't played the game, but I haven't made love to her; only I can't stay any longer; I've got to clear out."

Lionel nodded. "All right," he said; "let's go wherever you like; there are plenty of other snow places jollier than this."

"That isn't what I want," said Winn. "I want you to stay with her. I want you to marry her eventually—d' you see? It's quite simple, really."

"By Jove," said Lionel, thoughtfully; "simple, d' you call it? As simple as taking a header into the mid-Atlantic! And what good would it do you, my dear old chap, if I did? It wouldn't be you that had got her?"

"I dare say not," said Winn; "you don't see my point. She'd be all right with you. What I want for the girl is for her to be taken care of. She hasn't any people to speak of, and she's up here now with a rotten, unlicked cub of a brother. I fancy she's the kind of girl that would have a pretty hideous time with the wrong man. I've got to know she's being looked after. D' you see?"

"But why should she marry?" Lionel persisted. "Isn't she all right as she is? What do you want to marry her off for?"

"There'll be a man sooner or later," Winn explained. "There always is, and she's—well, I didn't believe girls were innocent before. By God, when they are, it makes you sit up! I couldn't run the risk of leaving her alone, and that's flat! It's like chucking matches to a child and turning your back on it.

"For after all, if a man cares about a girl the way I care about her, he does chuck her matches. When I go—some one decent ought to be there to take my place."

"But there isn't the slightest chance she'll like me, even if I happened to like her," Lionel protested. "Honestly, Winn, you haven't thought the thing out properly. You can't stick people about in each other's places—they don't fit."

"They can be made to," said Winn, inexorably, "if they're the proper people. She'll like you to start with, besides you read—authors. So does she—she's awfully clever, she doesn't think anything of Marie Corelli; and she likes a man. As to your taking to her—well, my dear chap, you haven't seen her! I give you a week; I'll hang about till then. You can tell me your decision at the end of it."

"That's another thing," said Lionel. "Of course you only care for the girl, I see that, it's quite natural, but if by any chance I did pull the thing off—what's going to happen to you and me, afterwards? I've cared for that most, always."

A Foehn wind had begun to blow up the valley—it brought with it a curious light that lay upon the snow like red dust. "I don't say I shall like it," Winn said after a pause. "I'm not out to like it. There isn't anything in the whole damned job possible for me to like. But I'd a lot rather have it than any other way. I think that ought to show you what I think of you. You needn't be afraid I'll chuck you for seeing me through. I might keep away for a time, but I'd come back. She isn't the kind of a woman that makes a difference between friends."

"Oh, all right," said Lionel after a pause, "I'll go in for it—if I can."

Winn got up and replaced his pipe carefully, shaking his ashes out on to the snow. "I'm sure I'm much obliged to you," he said stiffly.

The wind ran up the valley with a sound like a flying train. Neither of them spoke while the gust lasted. It fell as suddenly as it came, and the valley shrank back into its pall of silence.

It was so solitary that it seemed to Lionel as if, at times, it might easily have no existence.

Lionel walked a little in front of Winn; the snow was soft and made heavy going. At the corner of the valley he turned to wait for Winn, and then he remembered the fanciful legend of New Year's eve, for he saw Winn's face very set and white, and his eyes looked as if the presence of death was in them—turned toward Davos.



CHAPTER XVII

Winn was under the impression that he could stand two or three days, especially if he had something practical to do. What helped him was the condition of Mr. Bouncing. Mr. Bouncing had suddenly retired. He had a bedroom on the other side of Winn's, and a sitting-room connected it with his wife's; but Mrs. Bouncing failed increasingly to take much advantage of this connection. Her theory was that, once you were in bed, you were better left alone.

Mr. Bouncing refused to have a nurse; he said they were disagreeable women who wouldn't let you take your own temperature. This might have seemed to involve the services of Mrs. Bouncing; but they were taken up for the moment by a bridge drive.

"People do seem to want me so!" she explained plaintively to Winn in the corridor. "And I have a feeling, you know, Major Staines, that in a hotel like this it's one's duty to make things go."

"Some things go without much making," said Winn, significantly. He was under the impression that one of these things was Mr. Bouncing.

Winn made it his business, since it appeared to be nobody else's, to keep an eye on Mr. Bouncing: in the daytime he sat with him and ran his errands; at night he came in once or twice and heated things for Mr. Bouncing on a spirit lamp.

Mr. Bouncing gave him minute directions, and scolded him for leaving milk exposed to the menaces of the air and doing dangerous things with a teaspoon. Nevertheless, he valued Winn's company.

"You see," he explained to Winn, "when you can't sleep, you keep coming up to the point of dying. It's very odd, the point of dying, a kind of collapsishness that won't collapse. You say to yourself, 'I can't feel any colder than this,' or, 'I must have more breath,' or, 'This lung is bound to go if I cough much more.' And the funny part of it is, you do go on getting colder, and your breath breaks like a rotten thread, and you never stop coughing, and yet you don't go! I dare say I shall be quite surprised when I do. Then when you come in and give me warm, dry sheets and something hot to drink, something comes back. I suppose it's life force; but not much—never as much as when I started the collapse. I'm getting weaker every hour; don't you notice it? I never approved of all this lying in bed. I shall speak to Dr. Gurnet about it to-morrow."

Winn had noticed it; he came and sat down by Mr. Bouncing's bed.

"Snowy weather," he suggested, "takes the life out of you."

Mr. Bouncing ignored this theory.

"I hear," he went on, "that you and your new friend have changed your table. You don't sit with the Rivers any more."

"No," said Winn, laconically; "table isn't big enough."

"I expect they eat too fast," Mr. Bouncing continued; "young people almost always eat too fast. You'll digest better at another table. You look to me as if you had indigestion now."

Winn shook his head.

"Look here, Bouncing," he said earnestly, "I'm going off to St. Moritz next week to have a look at the Cresta; I wish you'd have a nurse. Drummond will run in and give an eye to you, of course; but you're pretty seedy, and that's a fact. I don't like leaving you alone."

"Next week," said Mr. Bouncing, thoughtfully. "Well, I dare say I shall be ready by then. It would be a pity, when I've just got you into the way of doing things properly, to have to teach them all over again to somebody else. I'm really not quite strong enough for that kind of thing. But I'm not going to have a nurse. Oh, dear, no! Nurses deceive you and cheer you up. I don't feel well enough to be cheered up. I like somebody who is thoroughly depressed himself, as you are, you know. I dare say you think I notice nothing lying here, but I've noticed that you're thoroughly depressed. Have you quarreled with your friend? It's odd you rush off to St. Moritz alone just when he's arrived."

"No, it isn't," said Winn, hastily. "He'll join me later; he's staying here at my request."

Mr. Bouncing sighed gently.

"Well," he said; "then all I can say is that you make very odd requests. One thing I'm perfectly sure about: if you go and look at the Cresta, you'll go down it, you're such a careless man, and then you'll be killed. Is that what you want?"

"I could do with it," said Winn, briefly.

"That," said Mr. Bouncing, "is because you're strong. It really isn't nice to talk in that light way about being killed to any one who has got to be before very long whether he likes it or not. If you were in my place you'd value your life, unless it got too uncomfortable, of course."

Winn apologized instantly. Mr. Bouncing accepted his apology graciously.

"You'll learn," he explained kindly, "how to talk to very ill people in time, and then probably you'll never see any more of them. Experience is a very silly thing, I've often noticed; it hops about so. No continuity. What I was going to say was, don't be worried about young Rivers and my wife. Take my word for it, you're making a great mistake."

"I am glad to hear you say so," Winn answered. "As a matter of fact, I have at present a few little private worries of my own; but I'm relieved, you think the Rivers boy is all right. I've been thinking of having a little talk with that tutor of his."

"Ah, I shouldn't do that if I were you," said Mr. Bouncing, urgently; "you're sure to be violent. I see you have a great deal of violence in you; you ought to control it. It's bad for your nerves. There are things I could tell you which would make you change your mind about young Rivers, but I don't know that I shall; it would excite me too much. I think I should like you to go down and telephone to Dr. Gurnet. Tell him my temperature is normal. It's a very odd thing; I haven't had a normal temperature for over three years. Perhaps I'm going to get better, after all. It's really only my breathing that's troubling me to-night. It would be funny if I got well, wouldn't it? But I mustn't talk any more; so don't come back until I knock in the night. Pass me the 'Pink 'Un.'" Winn passed him the "Pink 'Un" and raised him with one deft, strong movement more comfortably up on his pillows.

"You've got quite a knack for this sort of thing," Mr. Bouncing observed. "If you'd been a clever man, you might have been a doctor."

Mr. Bouncing did not knock during the night. Winn heard him stirring at ten o'clock, and went in. The final change had come very quickly. Mr. Bouncing was choking. He waved his hand as if the very appearance of Winn between him and the open balcony door kept away from him the air that he was vainly trying to breathe. Then a rush of blood came in a stream between his lips. Winn moved quickly behind him and lifted him in his arms.

Mr. Bouncing was no weight at all, and he made very little sound. He was quite conscious, and the look in his eyes was more interested than alarmed. The rush of bleeding stopped suddenly; his breathing was weaker and quieter, but he no longer choked.

"Look here, old man," Winn said, "let me get your wife."

But Mr. Bouncing signaled to him not to move; after a time he whispered:

"This is the first time I ever had hemorrhage. Most uncomfortable."

"Do let me get your wife!" Winn urged again.

"No," said Mr. Bouncing. "Women—not much good—after the first."

"Don't talk any more then, old man," Winn pleaded. "You'll start that bleeding off again."

But Mr. Bouncing made a faint clicking sound that might have been a laugh.

"Too late," he whispered. "Don't matter now. No more risks. Besides, I'm too—too uncomfortable to live."

There were several pauses in the hemorrhage, and at each pause Mr. Bouncing's mind came back to him as clear as glass. He spoke at intervals.

"Not Rivers," he said, fixing Winn's eyes, "Roper—Roper." Then he leaned back on the strong shoulder supporting him. "Glad to go," he murmured. "Life has been—a damned nuisance. I've had—enough of it." Then again, between broken, flying breaths he whispered, "Lonely."

"That's all right," Winn said gently.

"You're not alone now. I've got hold of you."

"No," whispered Mr. Bouncing, "no, I don't think you have."

There was no more violence now; his failing breath shook him hardly at all. Even as he spoke, something in him was suddenly freed; his chest rose slowly, his arm lifted then fell back, and Winn saw that he was no longer holding Mr. Bouncing.



CHAPTER XVIII

He closed the balcony door; the cold air filled the room as if it were still trying to come to the rescue of Mr. Bouncing. Winn had often done the last offices for the dead before, but always out of doors. Mr. Bouncing would have thought that a very careless way to die; he had often told Winn that he thought nature most unpleasant.

When Winn had set the room in order he sat down by the table and wondered if it would be wrong to smoke a cigarette. He wanted to smoke, but he came to the conclusion that it wasn't quite the thing.

To-night was the ball for the international skaters—he ought to have been there, of course. He had made Lionel go in his place, and had written a stiff little note to Claire, asking her to give his dances to his friend. He had Claire's answer in his pocket. "Of course I will, but I'm awfully disappointed." She had spelled disappointed with two s's and one p. Win had crushed the note into his pocket and not looked at it since, but he took it out now. It wasn't like smoking a cigarette. Bouncing wouldn't mind. There was no use making a fuss about it; he had done the best thing for her. He was handing all that immaculate, fresh youth into a keeping worthy of it. He wasn't fit himself. There were too many things he couldn't tell her, there was too much in him still that might upset and shock her. He would have done his best, of course, to have taken care of her; but better men could take better care. Lionel had said nothing so far; he had taken Claire skiing and skating, and once down the Schatz Alp. When he had come back from the Schatz Alp he had gone a long walk by himself. Winn had offered to accompany him, but Lionel had said he wanted to go alone and think. Winn accepted this decision without question. He knew Lionel was a clever man, but he didn't himself see anything to think about. The thing was perfectly simple: Lionel liked Claire or he didn't; no amount of being clever could make any difference. Winn was a little suspicious of thinking. It seemed to him rather like a way of getting out of things.

The room was very cold, but Winn didn't like going away and leaving Mr. Bouncing. By the by he heard voices in the next room. He could distinguish the high, flat giggle of Mrs. Bouncing. She had come back from the dance, probably with young Rivers. He must go in and tell her. That was the next thing to be done. He got up, shook himself, glanced at the appeased and peaceful young face upon the pillow, and walked into the next room. It was a sitting-room, and Winn had not knocked; but he shut the door instantly after him, and then stood in front of it, as if in some way to keep the silent tenant of the room behind him from seeing what he saw.

Mrs. Bouncing was in a young man's arms receiving a prolonged farewell. It wasn't young Rivers, and it was an accustomed kiss. Mrs. Bouncing screamed. She was the kind of woman who found a scream in an emergency as easily as a sailor finds a rope.

It wasn't Winn's place to say, "What the devil are you doing here, sir?" to Mr. Roper; it was the question which, if Mr. Roper had had the slightest presence of mind, he would have addressed to Winn. As it was he did nothing but snarl—a timid and ineffectual snarl which was without influence upon the situation.

"You'd better clear out," Winn continued; "but if I see you in Davos after the eight o'clock express to-morrow I shall give myself the pleasure of breaking every bone in your body. Any one's at liberty to play a game, Mr. Roper, but not a double game; and in the future I really wouldn't suggest your choosing a dying man's wife to play it with. It's the kind of thing that awfully ruffles his friends."

"I don't know what you mean," said Mr. Roper, hastily edging toward the door; "your language is most uncalled for. And as to going away, I shall do nothing of the kind."

"Better think it over," said Winn, with misleading calm. He moved forward as he spoke, seized Mr. Roper by the back of his coat as if he were some kind of boneless mechanical toy, and deposited him in the passage outside the door.

Mrs. Bouncing screamed again. This time it was a shrill and gratified scream. She felt herself to be the heroine of an occasion. Winn eyed her as a hostile big dog eyes one beneath his fighting powers. Then he said:

"I shouldn't make that noise if I were you; it's out of place. I came here to give you bad news."

This time Mrs. Bouncing didn't scream. She took hold of the edge of the table and repeated three times in a strange, expressionless voice:

"George is dead! George is dead! George is dead!"

Winn thought she was going to faint, but she didn't. She held on to the table.

"What ought I to do, Major Staines?" she asked in a quavering voice.

Winn considered the question gravely. It was a little late in the day for Mrs. Bouncing to start what she ought to do, but he approved of her determination.

"I think," he said at last—"I think you ought to go in and look at him. It's usual."

"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Bouncing, with a shiver, "I never have seen a corpse!"

Winn escorted her to the bedside and then turned away from her. She looked down at her dead husband. Mr. Bouncing had no anxiety in his face at all now; he looked incredibly contented and young.

"I—I suppose he really is gone?" said Mrs. Bouncing in a low voice. Then she moved waveringly over to a big armchair.

"There is no doubt about it at all," said Winn. "I didn't ring up Gurnet. He will come in any case first thing to-morrow morning."

Mrs. Bouncing moved her beringed hands nervously, and then suddenly began to cry. She cried quietly into her pocket-handkerchief, with her shoulders shaking.

"I wish things hadn't happened!" she sobbed. "Oh, dear! I wish things hadn't happened!" She did not refer to the death of Mr. Bouncing. Winn said nothing. "I really didn't mean any harm," Mrs. Bouncing went on between her sobs—"not at first. You know how things run on; and he'd been ill seven years, and one does like a little bit of fun, doesn't one?"

"I shouldn't think about all that now," Winn replied. "It isn't suitable."

Mrs. Bouncing shook her head and sobbed louder; sobbing seemed a refuge from suitability.

"I wouldn't have minded," she said brokenly, "if I'd heated his milk. I always thought he was so silly about having skin on it. I didn't believe when he came up-stairs it was because he was really worse. I wanted the sitting-room to myself. Oh dear! oh dear! I said it was all nonsense! And he said, 'Never mind, Millie; it won't be for long,' and I thought he meant he'd get down-stairs again. And he didn't; he meant this!"

Winn cleared his throat.

"I don't think he blamed you," he said, "as much as I did."

Mrs. Bouncing was roused by this into a sudden sense of her position.

"Oh," she said, "what are you going to do to me? You've always hated me. I'm sure I don't know why; I took quite a fancy to you that first evening. I always have liked military men, but you're so stand-offish; and now, of course, goodness knows what you'll think! If poor old George were alive he'd stand up for me!"

"I'm not going to do anything to hurt you, Mrs. Bouncing," said Winn, after a short pause. "You'll stay on here, of course, till after the funeral. We shall do all we can to help you, and then you'll go back to England, won't you?"

"Yes," she said, shivering, "I suppose so. I shall go back to England. I shall have to see George's people. They don't like me. Will—will that be all?"

"As far as I am concerned," said Winn, more gently, "there is only one thing further I have to suggest. I should like you to promise me, when you leave here, to have nothing more to do with young Rivers. It's better not; it puts him off his work."

Mrs. Bouncing reddened.

"Oh," she said, "I know; I didn't mean any harm by that. You can't help young men taking a fancy to you, can you? At least I can't. It looked better didn't it, in a way—you know what I mean. I didn't want people to think anything. If only George hadn't been so good to me! I don't suppose you can understand, but it makes it worse when they are."

It seemed to Winn as if he could understand, but he didn't say so. Bouncing should have pulled her up. Winn always believed in people being pulled up. The difficulty lay in knowing how to carry the process out. It had seemed to Mr. Bouncing simpler to die.

"You'd better go to bed now," Winn said at last. "People will be up soon. He died quite peacefully. He didn't want you to be disturbed. I think that's all, Mrs. Bouncing."

She got up and went again to the bed.

"I suppose I oughtn't to kiss him?" she whispered. "I haven't any right to now, have I? You know what I mean? But I would have liked to kiss him."

"Oh, I don't believe he'd mind," said Winn, turning away.

Mrs. Bouncing kissed him.



CHAPTER XIX

Winn felt no desire to go to bed. He went out into the long, blank corridor and wondered if the servants would be up soon and he could get anything to drink. The passage was intensely still; it stretched interminably away from him like a long, unlighted road. A vague gray light came from the windows at each end. It was too early for the shapes of the mountains to be seen. The outside world was featureless and very cold.

There was no sound in the house except the faint sound behind the green baize doors, which never wholly ceased. Winn had always listened to it before with an impatient distaste; he had hated to hear these echoes of dissolution. This morning, for the first time, he felt curious.

Suppose things had gone differently; that he'd been too late, and known his fate? He could have stayed on then; he could have accepted Claire's beautiful young friendliness. He could have left her free; and yet he could have seen her every day; then he would have died.

Weakness has privileges. It escapes responsibility; allowances are made for it. It hasn't got to get up and go, tearing itself to pieces from the roots. He could have told her about Peter and Estelle and what a fool he had been; and at the end, he supposed, it wouldn't have mattered if he had just mentioned that he loved her.

Now there wasn't going to be any end. Life would stretch out narrow, interminable, and dark, like the passage with the windows at each end, which were only a kind of blur without any light.

However, of course there was no use bothering about it; since the servants weren't up and he couldn't get any coffee, he must just turn in. It suddenly occurred to Winn that what he was feeling now was unhappiness, a funny thing; he had never really felt before. It was the kind of feeling the man had had, under the lamp-post at the station, carrying his dying wife. The idea of a broken heart had always seemed to Winn namby-pamby. You broke if you were weak; you didn't break if you were strong. What was happening now was that he was strong and he was being broken. It was a painful process, because there was a good deal of him to break, and it had only just begun. However, this was mercifully hidden from him. He said to himself: "I dare say I'm run down and fidgety with having had to sit up with Bouncing. I shall feel all right to-morrow." Then the door behind him opened, and Lionel joined him. He was still dressed as he had been when he came back from the ball some hours earlier.

"Hullo!" he said. "I wondered if that was you; I thought I heard something stirring outside. You weren't in your room when I came in. Been with Bouncing?"

"Yes," said Winn; "he's dead. I'm looking for some coffee. These confounded, tow-headed Swiss mules never get up at any decent hour. Why are you still dressed? Nothing wrong, is there?"

"Well, I didn't feel particularly sleepy, somehow," Lionel acknowledged. "Are you going to stand outside in this moth-eaten passage the rest of the night, or will you come in with me and have a whisky and soda? You must be fagged out."

"I don't mind if I do," Winn agreed. "We may as well make a night of it."

For a few minutes neither of them spoke, then Winn said: "Had a jolly dance?"

Lionel did not answer him directly; but he turned round, and met his friend's eyes with his usual unswerving honesty.

"Look here, old Winn," he said, "it's up to you to decide now. I'll stay on here or go with you, whichever you like."

"You like her, then?" Winn asked quickly.

"Yes," said Lionel, "I like her."

"Well, then, you'll stay of course," said Winn without any hesitation. "Isn't that what we damned well settled?"

Lionel's eyes had changed. They were full of a new light; he looked as if some one had lit a lantern within him. Love had come to him not as it had come to Winn, bitterly, unavailingly, without illusion; it had fallen upon his free heart and lit it from end to end with joy. He loved as a man loves whose heart is clean and who has never loved before, without a scruple and without restraint. Love had made no claims on him yet; it had not offered him either its disappointments or its great rewards. He was transformed without being altered. He simply saw everything as glorious which before had been plain, but he did not see different things.

"Yes," he said, "I know we talked about it; but I'm hanged if I'll try unless I'm sure you are absolutely keen. I thought it all out after—after I'd seen her, and it seemed to me all very well in the abstract giving her up to another man and all that, but when it came to the point, would you be really sure to want me to carry through? I've seen her now, you know, and I'm glad I've seen her. I'll be glad always for that, but it needn't go any further."

Winn looked past him; he was tired with the long night's strain, and he had no white ideal to be a rapture in his heart. He loved Claire not because she was perfection, but because she was herself. She was faultless to Lionel, but Winn didn't care whether she was faultless or not. He didn't expect perfection or even want it, and he wasn't the man to be satisfied with an ideal; but he wanted, as few men have ever wanted for any women, that Claire should be happy and safe.

"I've told you once," he said; "you might know I shouldn't change. I've got one or two little jobs to see to about Bouncing's funeral. That woman's half a little cat and half an abject fool. Still, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for her. I dare say I can get things done by lunch-time; then I'll drive over the Fluella. I'll put up at the Kulm; but don't bother to write till you've got something settled. I'm not going to mess about saying good-by to people. You can tell Miss Rivers when I'm gone."

"Look here," Lionel urged, "you can't do that; you must say good-by to her properly. She was awfully sick at your not turning up at the ball. After all, you know, you've seen a lot of her, and she particularly likes you. You can't jump off into space, as if you were that old chap in the Bible without any beginning or any end!"

Winn stuck his hands in his pockets and looked immovably obstinate.

"I'm damned if I do," he replied. "Why should I? What's the use of saying good-by? The proper thing to do when you're going away is to go. You needn't linger, mewing about like somebody's pet kitten."

Lionel poured out the whiskey before replying, and pushed a glass in Winn's direction; then he said:

"Don't be a fool, old chap; you'll have to say good-by to her. You don't want to hurt her feelings."

"What's it to you whether I hurt her feelings or not?" Winn asked savagely.

There was a moment's sharp tension. It dropped at the tone of Lionel's quiet voice.

"It's a great deal to me," he said steadily; "but I know it's not half as much to me as it is to you, old Winn."

"Oh, all right," said Winn after a short pause. "I suppose I'll say it if you think I ought to. Only stand by if you happen to be anywhere about. By the by, I hope I shall have some kind of a scrap with Roper before the morning's over. I shall enjoy that. Infernal little beast, I caught him out last night. I can't tell you how; but unless he's off by the eight o'clock to-morrow, he's in for punishment."

Lionel laughed.

"All right," he said; "don't murder him. I'm going to turn in now. Sorry about Bouncing. Did he have a bad time, poor chap?"

"No," said Winn, "not really. He had a jolly sight harder time living; and yet I believe he'd have swopped with me at the end. Funny how little we know what the other fellow feels!"

"We can get an idea sometimes," Lionel said in a queer voice, with his back to his friend. Winn hastened to the door of his room. He knew that Lionel had an idea. He said, as he half closed the door on himself:

"Thanks awfully for the whiskey."



CHAPTER XX

Unfortunately, Winn was not permitted the pleasure of punishing Mr. Roper in the morning. Mr. Roper thought the matter over for the greater part of an unpleasantly short night. He knew that he could prepare a perfect case, he could easily clear himself to his pupil, he could stand by his guns, and probably even succeed in making Mrs. Bouncing stand by hers; but he didn't want to be thrashed. Whatever else happened, he knew that he could not get out of this. Winn meant to thrash him, and Winn would thrash him. People like Winn could not be manipulated; they could only be avoided. They weren't afraid of being arrested, and they didn't care anything about being fined. They damned the consequences of their ferocious acts; and if you happened to be one of the consequences and had a constitutional shrinking from being damned, it was wiser to pack early and be off by an eight o'clock train.

Winn was extremely disappointed at this decision; it robbed him of something which, as he thought, would have cleared the air. However, he spent a busy morning in assisting Mrs. Bouncing. She was querulous and tearful and wanted better dressmakers and a more becoming kind of mourning than it was easy to procure in Davos. It seemed to Winn as if she was under the impression that mourning was more important to a funeral than a coffin; but when it came to the coffin, she had terrible ideas about lilies embroidered in silver, which upset Winn very much.

Mr. Bouncing had always objected to lilies. He considered that their heavy scent was rather dangerous. Mrs. Bouncing told Winn what everybody in the hotel had suggested, and appeared to expect him to combine and carry out all their suggestions, with several other contradictory ones of her own.

During this crisis Maurice Rivers markedly avoided Mrs. Bouncing. He felt as if she might have prevented Mr. Bouncing's death just then. It was a failure of tact. He didn't like the idea of death, and he had always rather counted oh the presence of Mr. Bouncing. He was afraid he might, with Mr. Bouncing removed, have gone a little too far.

He explained his position to Winn, whom he met on one of his many errands.

"One doesn't want to let oneself in for anything, you know," he asserted. "I'm sure, as a man of the world, you'd advise me to keep out of it, wouldn't you? It's different for you, of course; you were poor Bouncing's friend."

Winn, whose temper was extremely ruffled, gave him a formidable glance.

"You get into things a bit too soon, my boy," he replied coldly, "and get out of 'em a bit too late."

"Oh, come, you know," said Maurice, jauntily, "I'm not responsible for poor old Bouncing's death, am I?"

"I don't say you are," Winn continued, without looking any pleasanter. "Bouncing had to die, and a jolly good thing for him it was when it came off; his life wasn't worth a row of pins. But I wasn't talking about him; I was talking about her. If you really want my advice, I'll tell you plainly that if you want to go the pace, choose women one doesn't marry, don't monkey about with the more or less respectable ones who have a right to expect you to play the game. It's not done, and it's beastly unfair. D' you see my point?"

Maurice wondered if he should be thoroughly angry or not. Suddenly it occurred to him that Winn was waiting, and that he had better see his point and not be thoroughly angry.

"Yes, I dare say I did go a little far," he admitted, throwing out a manly chest; "but between you and me, Staines, should you say our friend Mrs. B. was respectable or not?"

"She isn't my friend," said Winn, grimly; "but as she ought to be yours, I'll trouble you to keep your questions to yourself."

The idea of being angry having apparently been taken out of Maurice's hands, he made haste to disappear into the hotel.

Winn walked on into the village. It was the last time he intended to go there. There was nothing peculiarly touching about the flat, long road, with the rink beneath it and the mountains above. The houses and shops, German pensions and crowded balconies had no particular charm. Even the tall, thin spire of the church lacked distinction; and yet it seemed to Winn that it would be difficult to forget. He stopped at the rink as he returned to pick up his skates. He told himself that he was fortunate when he discovered Claire, with Lionel on one side of her and Ponsonby on the other; he had wanted the help of an audience; now he was going to have one. Claire saw him before the others did, and skated swiftly across to him.

"But why don't you put your skates on?" she said, pointing to them in his hand. "You're not much good there, you know, on the bank."

"I'm not much good anywhere, as far as that goes," said Winn, quickly, before the others came up. Then he said in a different voice, "I hope you enjoyed your dance last night."

Claire paused the briefest moment before she answered him; it was as if she were trying quickly to change the key in which she spoke in order to meet his wishes, and as if she did not want to change the key.

"Yes, I did," she said, "most awfully. It was a heavenly dance. I was so sorry you couldn't come, but Captain Drummond told me why."

Winn confounded Lionel under his breath for not holding his tongue; but he felt a warmth stir in his heart at the knowledge that, no matter what was at stake, Lionel would not suffer the shadow of blame to attach itself to him. It had been one of Winn's calculations that Claire would be annoyed at his disappointing her and think the less of him because she was annoyed. He was not a clever calculator.

"Of course I understood," Claire went on; "you had to be with poor Mr. Bouncing. It was just like you to stay with him." She had said a good deal, considering that Mr. Ponsonby and Lionel were there. Still, Winn did not misunderstand her. Of course she meant nothing.

"Well," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm extremely glad, Miss Rivers, to have run across you like this, because I'm off this afternoon to St. Moritz. I want to have a look at the Cresta."

Claire ignored his outstretched hand.

"Oh," she cried a little breathlessly, "you're not going away, are you? But you'll come back again, of course?"

"I hope so, I'm sure, some day or other," said Winn. Then he turned to Ponsonby. "Have you been down the Cresta?" he asked.

Mr. Ponsonby shook his head.

"Not from Church Leap," he replied. "I've got too much respect for my bones. It's awfully tricky; I've gone down from below it. You don't get such a speed on then."

"Oh, Major Staines, you won't toboggan?" Claire cried out. "You know you mustn't toboggan! Dr. Gurnet said you mustn't. You won't, will you? Captain Drummond, aren't you going with him to stop him?"

Lionel laughed.

"He isn't a very easy person to stop," he answered her. "I'll join him later on, of course; but I want to see a little more of Davos before I go."

"There isn't the slightest danger," Winn remarked, without meeting Claire's eyes. "The Cresta's as safe as a church hassock. There isn't half the skill in tobogganing that there is in skating. Good-by, Miss Rivers. I never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed our skating competition. I'm most grateful to you for putting up with me."

Claire gave him her hand then, but Winn remembered afterward that she never said good-by. She looked at him as if he had done something which was not fair.



CHAPTER XXI

Winn's chief objection to St. Moritz was the shabby way in which it imitated Davos. It had all the same materials—endless snows, forests of fir-trees, soaring peaks and the serene blueness of the skies—and yet as Davos it didn't in the least come off. It was more beautiful and less definite; the peaks were nearer and higher; they streamed out around the valley like an army with banners. The long, low lake and the small, perched villages, grossly overtopped by vulgar hotel palaces, had a far more fugitive air.

It was a place without a life of its own. Whatever character St. Moritz might once have had was as lost as that of the most catholic of evening ladies in Piccadilly.

Davos had had the dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St. Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a company of tramps.

There was this advantage for Winn: nobody wanted to be friendly unless one was a royalty or a financial magnate. Winn was as much alone as if he had dropped from Charing Cross into the Strand. He smoked, read his paper, and investigated in an unaccommodating spirit all that St. Moritz provided; but he didn't have to talk.

Winn was suffering from a not uncommon predicament: he had done the right thing at enormous cost, and he was paying for it, instead of being paid. Virtue had struck her usual hard bargain with her votaries. She had taken all he had to give, and then sent in a bill for damages.

He was not in the least aware that he was unhappy, and often, for five or ten minutes at a time, he would forget Claire; afterward he would remember her, and that was worse. The unfortunate part of being made all of a piece is that if you happen to want anything, there is really no fiber of your being that doesn't want it.

Winn loved in the same spirit that he rode and he always rode to a finish. In these circumstances and in this frame of mind, the Cresta occurred to Winn in the light of a direct inspiration. No one could ride the Cresta with any other preoccupation.

Winn knew that he oughtn't to do it; he remembered Dr. Gurnet's advice, and it put an edge to his intention. If he couldn't have what he wanted, there would be a minor satisfaction in doing what he oughtn't. The homely adage of cutting off your nose to spite your face had never been questioned by the Staines family. They looked upon a nose as there chiefly for that purpose. It was a last resource to be drawn upon, when the noses of others appeared to be out of reach.

There were, however, a few preliminary difficulties. No one was allowed to ride the Cresta without practice, and it was a part of Winn's plan not to be bothered with gradual stages. Only one man had ever been known to start riding the Cresta from Church Leap without previous trials, and his evidence was unobtainable as he was unfortunately killed during the experiment. Since this adventure a stout Swiss peasant had been placed to guard the approaches to the run. Winn walked up to him during the dinner-hour, when he knew the valley was freest from possible intruders.

"I want you to clear off," he said to the man, offering him five francs, and pointing in the direction of St. Moritz. The peasant shook his head, retaining the five francs, and opening the palm of his other hand. Winn placed a further contribution in it and said firmly:

"Now if you don't go I shall knock you down." He shook his fist to reinforce the feebleness of his alien speech. The Swiss peasant stepped off the path hurriedly into a snow-drift. He was a reasonable man, and he did not grasp why one mad Englishman should wish to be killed, nor, for the matter of that, why others equally mad, should wish to prevent it. So he walked off in the direction of St. Moritz and hid behind a tree, reposing upon the deeply rooted instinct of not being responsible for what he did not see.

Winn regarded the run methodically, placed his toboggan on the summit of the leap, and looked down at the thin, blue streak stretching into the distance. The valley appeared to be entirely empty; there was nothing visibly moving in it except a little distant smoke on the way to Samaden. The run looked very cold and very narrow; the nearest banks stood up like cliffs.

Winn strapped a rake to his left foot, and calculated that the instant he felt the ice under him he must dig into it, otherwise he would go straight over the first bank. Then he crouched over his toboggan, threw himself face downward, and felt it spring into the air.

He kept no very definite recollection of the sixty-odd seconds that followed. The ice rose up at him like a wall; the wind—he had not previously been aware of the faintest draught of air—cut into his eyes and forehead like fire. His lips blistered under it.

He felt death at every dizzy, dwindling second—death knotted up and racketing, so imminent that he wouldn't have time to straighten himself out or let go of his toboggan before he would be tossed out into the empty air.

He remembered hearing a man say that if you fell on the Cresta and didn't let go of your toboggan, it knocked you to pieces. His hands were fastened on the runners as if they were clamped down with iron. The scratching of the rake behind him sounded appalling in the surrounding silence.

He shot up the first bank, shaving the top by the thinness of a hair, wobbled sickeningly back on to the straight, regained his grip, shot the next bank more easily, and whirled madly down between the iron walls. He felt as if he were crawling slowly as a fly crawls up a pane of glass, in a buzzing eternity.

Then he was bumped across the road and shot under the bridge. There was a hill at the end of the run. As he flew up it he became for the first time aware of pace. The toboggan took it like a racing-cutter, and at the top rose six feet into the air, and plunged into the nearest snow-drift.

Winn crawled out, feeling very sick and shaken, and as if every bone in his body was misplaced.

"Oh, you idiot! You idiot! you unbounded, God-forsaken idiot!" a voice exclaimed in his ears. "You've given me the worst two minutes of my life!"

Winn looked around him more annoyed than startled. He felt a great disinclination for speech and an increasing desire to sit down and keep still; and he did not care to conduct a quarrel sitting down.

However, a growing inability to stand up decided him; he dragged out his toboggan and sat on it.

The speaker appeared round a bend of the run. She had apparently been standing in the path that overlooked a considerable portion of it.

She was not a young woman, and from her complexion and the hardness of her thickly built figure she might have been made of wood.

She wore a short, strapped-in skirt, leather leggings, and a fawn-colored sweater. Her eyes were a sharp, decided blue, and the rest of her appearance matched the sweater.

Winn pulled himself together.

"I don't see, Madam," he remarked slowly, but with extreme aggressiveness, "what the devil my actions have to do with you!"

"No," said the lady, grimly, "I don't suppose from the exhibition I've just been watching, that you're in the habit of seeing farther than to the end of your own nose. However, I may as well point out to you that if you had killed yourself, as you richly deserved, and as you came within an ace of doing, the run would have been stopped for the season. We should all have been deprived of the Grand National, and I, who come up here solely to ride the Cresta, which I have done regularly every winter for twenty years, would have had my favorite occupation snatched from me at an age when I could least afford to miss it."

"I haven't been killed, and I had not the slightest intention of being so," Winn informed her with dangerous calm. "I merely wished to ride the Cresta for the first time unobserved. Apparently I have failed in my intention. If so, it is my misfortune and not my fault." He took out a cigarette, and lit it with a steady hand, and turned his eyes away from her. He expected her to go away, but, to his surprise, she spoke again.

"My name," she said, "is Marley. What is yours?"

"Staines," Winn replied with even greater brevity. He had to give her his name, but he meant it to be his last concession.

"Ah," she said thoughtfully, "that accounts for it. You're the image of Sir Peter, and you seem to have inherited not only his features, but his manners. I needn't, perhaps, inform you that the latter were uniformly bad. I knew your father when I was a girl. He was stationed in Hong-Kong at the time and he was good enough to call me the little Chinese, no doubt in reference to my complexion. Plain as I am now, I was a great deal plainer as a girl, though I dare say you wouldn't think it."

Winn made no comment upon this doubtful statement; he merely grunted. His private opinion was that ladies of any age should not ride the Cresta, and that ladies old enough to have known his father at Hong-Kong should not toboggan at all.

It was unsuitable, and she might have hurt herself; into these two pitfalls women should never fall.

Miss Marley had a singularly beautiful speaking voice; it was as soft as velvet. She dropped it half a tone, and said suddenly:

"Look here, don't do that kind of thing again. It's foolish. People don't always get killed, you know; sometimes they get maimed. Forgive me, but I thought I would just like to point it out to you. I could not bear to see a strong man maimed."

Winn knew that it was silly and weak to like her just because of the tone of her voice, but he found himself liking her. He had a vague desire to tell her that he wouldn't do it again and that he had been rather a fool; but the snow was behaving in a queer way all around him; it appeared to be heaving itself up. He said instead:

"Excuse me for sitting down like this. I've had a bit of a shake. I'll be all right in a moment or two." Then he fainted.

Miss Marley stooped over him, opened his collar, laid him flat on the ground—he had fallen in a heap on his toboggan—and chafed his wrists and forehead with snow. When she saw that he was coming round, she moved a little away from him and studied his toboggan.

"If I were you," she observed, "I should have these runners cut a little finer; they are just a shade too thick."

Winn dragged himself on to the toboggan and wondered how his collar came to be undone. When he did it up, he found his hands were shaking, which amazed him very much. He looked a little suspiciously at his companion.

"Of course," Miss Marley continued pleasantly, "I ought to have that watchman discharged. I am a member of the Cresta committee, and he behaved scandalously; but I dare say you forced him into it, so I shall just walk up the hill and give him a few straight words. Probably you don't know the dialect. I've made a point of studying it. If I were you, I should stay where you are until I come back. I want you to come to tea with me at Cresta. There's a particularly good kind of bun in the village, and I think I can give you some rather useful tobogganing tips. It isn't worth while your climbing up the hill just to climb down again, is it? Besides, you'd probably frighten the man."

"Thanks," said Winn. "All right; I'll stay." He didn't want the Cresta bun, and he thought that he resented Miss Marley's invitation; but, on the other hand, he was intensely glad she was going off and leaving him alone.

He felt uncommonly queer. Perhaps he could think of some excuse to avoid the tea when she came back.

All the muscles of his chest seemed to have gone wrong; it hurt him to breathe. He sat with his head down, like a man climbing a hill against a strong wind. It was rather funny to feel ill again when he had really forgotten he was up there for his health. That was what he felt—ill.

It was not nearly as painful a feeling as remembering Claire. Unfortunately, it was very quickly followed by the more painful feeling.

When Miss Marley came back, he had the eyes of a creature caught in a trap.

She took him to Cresta to tea, and it did not occur to Winn to wonder why a woman who at forty-five habitually rode the Cresta should find it necessary to walk at the pace of a deliberating snail. It was a pace which at the moment suited Winn precisely.

On the whole he enjoyed his tea. Miss Marley's manners, though abrupt, had certain fine scruples of their own. She showed no personal curiosity and she gave Winn some really valuable tips. He began to understand why she had so deeply resented his trifling with the Cresta.

Miss Marley was one of the few genuine workers at St. Moritz, a member of the old band who had worked devotedly to produce the Monster which had afterward as promptly devoured them. This fate, however, had not as yet overtaken Miss Marley. She was too tough and too rich to be very easily devoured. The Cresta was at once her child and her banner; she had helped to make it, and she wound its folds around her as a screen for her invisible kindnesses.

Menaced boys could have told how she had averted their ruin with large checks and sharp reproofs. She had saved many homes and covered many scandals. For girls she had a special tenderness. She had never been a beautiful young girl, and she had a pathetic reverence for what was frail and fair. For them she had no reproofs, only vast mercy, and patient skill in releasing them from the traps which had caught their flurried young senses; but for those who had set the traps she had no mercy.

Miss Marley was not known for any of these things. She was celebrated for fights with chaplains and sanitary inspectors, and for an inability to give in to authority unless authority knew what it was about. She had never once tried to please, which is the foundation of charm. Perhaps it would have been a useless effort, for she was not born to please. She was born to get things done.

After Miss Marley had talked to Winn for an hour, she decided to get him to join the Bandy Club. He was the kind of man who must do something, and it was obviously better that he should not again tempt fate by riding the Cresta from Church Leap without practice. This course became clearer to Miss Marley when she discovered that Winn had come up for his health.

"Of course a fellow who wasn't seedy wouldn't have made an ass of himself over riding the Cresta," Winn explained, eyeing her thoughtfully.

He must have got somehow off his toboggan on to the snow, and he had no recollection at all of getting there. Miss Marley said nothing to enlighten him further. She merely suggested bandy. After dinner she introduced Winn to the captain of the St. Moritz team, and at three o'clock the next afternoon she watched him play in a practice-match.

Winn played with a concentrated viciousness which assured her of two things: he would be an acquisition to the team, and if he felt as badly as all that, it was just as well to get some of it worked off on anything as unresponsive as a ball.

After this Miss Marley let him alone. She considered this the chief factor in assisting the lives of others; and for nearly two hours a day, while he was playing bandy, Winn succeeded in not remembering Claire.



CHAPTER XXII

Winn's way of playing bandy was to play as if there wasn't any ice. In the first few practices it had the disadvantage of a constant series of falls, generally upon the back of his head; but he soon developed an increasing capacity of balance and an intensity of speed. He became the quickest forward the St. Moritz team had ever possessed.

When he was following the ball he took up his feet and ran. The hard clash of the skates, the determined onrush of the broad-built, implacable figure, were terrible to withstand. What was to be done against a man who didn't skate, but tore, who fell upon a ball as a terrier plunges, eyeless and intent, into a rat-hole? The personal safety of himself or others never occurred to Winn. He remembered nothing but the rules of the game. These he held in the back of his mind, with the ball in front of it.

All St. Moritz came to watch the great match between itself and Davos. It was a still, cold day; there was no blue in the sky; the mountains were a hard black and white and the valley very colorless and clear. There was a hush of coming snow in the air, and the sky was covered by a toneless, impending cloud.

The game, after a brief interval, became a duel between two men: Winn, with his headlong, thirsty method of attack, and the champion player of Davos, Mavorovitch, who was known as the most finished skater of the season.

Mavorovitch never apparently lifted his skates, but seemed to send them forward by a kind of secret pressure. He was a very cool player, as quick as mercury and as light as thistledown. Winn set himself against him with the dogged fury of a bull against a toreador.

"That man's not brave; he's careless," a St. Moritz potentate remarked to Miss Marley. Miss Marley gave a short laugh and glanced at Winn.

"That's my idea of courage," she said, "carelessness toward things that don't count. Major Staines isn't careless with the ball."

"A game's a game," the foreign prince protested, "not a prolonged invitation to concussion."

"All, that's where your foreign blood comes in, Your Highness," argued Miss Marley. "A game isn't a game to an Englishman; it's his way of tackling life. As a man plays so he reaps."

"Very well, then," remarked her companion, gravely. "Mark my words, Madame, your friend over there will reap disaster."

Winn tackled the ball in a series of sudden formidable rushes; he hurled himself upon the slight form of Mavorovitch, only to find he had before him a portion of the empty air. Mavorovitch was invariably a few inches beyond his reach, and generally in possession of the ball.

Twice Winn wrested it forcibly from him and got half way up the ice, tearing along with his skates crashing their iron way toward the goal, and twice Mavorovitch noiselessly, except for a faint scraping, slid up behind him and coaxed the ball out of his very grip. St. Moritz lost two goals to nothing in the first half, and Winn felt as if he were biting on air.

He stood a little apart from the other players, with his back turned to the crowd. He wished it wasn't necessary always to have an audience; a lot of people who sat and did nothing irritated him. Mavorovitch irritated him, too. He did not like a man to be so quiet; the faint click, click of Mavorovitch's skates on the ice was like a lady knitting.

The whistle sounded again, and Winn set upon the ball with redoubled fury. He had a feeling that if he didn't win this game he was going to dislike it very much. He tore up the ice, every muscle strained, his stick held low, caressing the round, flying knob in front; he had got the ball all right, the difficulty was going to be, to keep it. His mind listened to the faint distant scraping of Mavorovitch's approach. Winn had chosen the exact spot for slowing up for his stroke.

It must be a long-distance shot or Mavorovitch would be there to intercept him, the longer, the safer, if he could get up speed enough for his swing. He had left the rest of the players behind him long ago, tossing some to one side and outflanking others; but he had not got clear away from Mavorovitch, bent double, and quietly calculating, a few feet behind him, the exact moment for an intercepting spurt: and then through the sharpness of the icy air and the sense of his own speed an extraordinary certainty flashed into Winn. He was not alone; Claire was there. He called it a fancy, but he knew it was a certainty. A burning joy seized him, and a new wild strength poured into him. He could do anything now.

He drew up suddenly, long before the spot he had fixed upon as a certain stroke, lifted his arm, and struck with all his might. It was a long, doubtful, crossing stroke, almost incredibly distant from the goal.

The crowd held its breath as the ball rose, cutting straight above the goal-keeper's head, through the very center of the goal.

Winn was probably the only person there who didn't follow its flight. He looked up quickly at the bank above him, and met her eyes. She was as joined to him as if they had no separate life.

In a moment it struck him that there was nothing else to do but to go to her at once, take her in his arms, and walk off with her somewhere into the snow. He knew now that he had been in hell; the sight of her was like the sudden cessation of blinding physical pain.

Then he pulled himself together and went back to the game. He couldn't think any more, but the new activity in him went on playing methodically and without direction.

Mavorovitch, who was playing even more skilfully and swiftly, got the better of him once or twice; but the speed that had given Winn room for his great stroke flowed tirelessly through him. It seemed to him as if he could have outpaced a Scotch express.

He carried the ball off again and again out of the mob of his assailants. They scattered under his rushes like creatures made of cardboard. He offered three goals and shot one. The cheering of the St. Moritzers sounded in his ears as if it were a long way off. He saw the disappointed, friendly grin of little Mavorovitch as the last whistle settled the match at five goals to four against Davos, but everything seemed cloudy and unreal. He heard Mavorovitch say:

"Spooner never told us he had a dark horse over here. I must say I am disappointed. Until half-time I thought I should get the better of you; but how did you get that devilish spurt on? Fierce pace tires, but you were easier to tire when you began."

Winn's eyes wandered over the little man beside him.

"Oh, I don't know," he said good-naturedly; he had never in his life felt so good-natured. "I suppose I thought we were getting beaten. That rather braces one up, doesn't it?"

"Ah, that is you English all over," laughed Mavorovitch. "We have a saying, 'In all campaigns the English lose many battles, but they always win one—namely, the last.'"

"I'm sure it's awfully jolly of you to say so," said Winn. "You play a pretty fine game yourself, you know, considerably more skill in it than mine. I had no idea you were not English yourself."

Mavorovitch seemed to swim away into a mist of laughter, people receded, the bank receded; at last he stood before her. Winn thought she was a little thinner in the face and her eyes were larger than ever. He could not take his own away from her; he had no thoughts, and he forgot to speak.

Everybody was streaming off to tea. The rink was deserted; it lay a long, gray shadow beneath the high, white banks. The snow had begun to fall, light, dry flakes that rested like powder on Claire's curly hair. She waited for him to speak; but as he still said nothing, she asked with a sudden dimple:

"Where does this path lead to?"

Then Winn recollected himself, and asked her if she didn't want some tea. Claire shook her head.

"Not now," she said decidedly; "I want to go along this path."

Winn obeyed her silently. The path took them between dark fir-trees to the farthest corner of the little park. Far below them a small stream ran into the lake, it was frozen over, but in the silence they could hear it whispering beneath the ice. The world was as quiet as if it lay in velvet. Then Claire said suddenly:

"Oh, why did you make me hurt him when I liked him so much?"

They found a bench and sat down under the trees.

"Do you mean you've sent Lionel away?" Winn asked anxiously.

"Yes," she said in a forlorn little voice; "yesterday I sent him away. He didn't know I was coming over here, he was very miserable. He asked me if I knew about you—he said he believed you wanted me to—and I said, 'Of course I know everything.' I wasn't going to let him think you hadn't told me. Why did you go away?"

He had not thought she would ask him that. It was as if he saw before him an interminable hill which he had believed himself to have already climbed.

He drew a deep breath, then he said:

"Didn't they talk about it? I wrote to her, the chaplain's wife I mean; I hadn't time to see her, but I sent it by the porter. I thought she'd do; she seemed a gossipy woman, kept on knitting and gassing over a stove in the hall. I thought she was—a sort of circulating library, you see. I tipped the porter—tow-headed Swiss brute. I suppose he swallowed it."

"He went away the same day you did," Claire explained. "Nobody told me anything. Do you think I would have let them? I wouldn't let Lionel, and I knew he had a right to, but I didn't care about anybody's rights. You see, I—I thought you'd tell me yourself. So I came," she finished quietly.

She waited. Winn began to draw patterns on the snow with his stick, then he said:

"I've been a bit of a blackguard not telling you myself. I didn't want to talk about it, and that's a fact. I'm married."

He kept his face turned away from her. It seemed a long time before she spoke.

"You should have told me that before," she said in a queer, low voice. "It's too late now."

"Would it," he asked quickly, "have made any difference—about Lionel, I mean?"

She shook her head.

"Not," she said, "about Lionel."

He bent lower over the pattern in the snow; it had become more intricate.

"I couldn't tell you," he muttered; "I tried. I couldn't. That was why I went off. You say too late. D'you mind telling me if you mean—you care?"

Her silence seemed interminable, and then he knew she had already answered him. It seemed to him that if he sat there and died, he couldn't speak.

"Winn," she asked in a whisper, "did you go because of me—or because of you?"

He turned round, facing her.

"Is that worrying you?" he asked fiercely. "Well, you can see for yourself, can't you? All there is of me—" He could not finish his sentence.

It was snowing heavily. They seemed intensely, cruelly alone. It was as if all life crept off and left them by themselves in the drifting gray snow, in their silent little corner of the unconscious, unalterable world.

Winn put his arm around her and drew her head down on his shoulder.

"It's all right," he said rather thickly. "I won't hurt you."

But he knew that he had hurt her, and that it was all wrong.

She did not cry, but she trembled against his heart. He felt her shivering as if she were afraid of all the world but him.

"I must stay with you," she whispered. "I must stay with you, mustn't I?"

He tried not to say "always," but he thought afterward that he must have said "always."

Then she lifted her curls and her little fur cap with the snow on it from his shoulder, and looked deep into his eyes. The worst of it was that hers were filled with joy.

"Winn," she said, "do you love me enough for anything? Not only for happiness, but, if we had to have dreadful things, enough for dreadful things?"

She spoke of dreadful things as if they were outside her, and as if they were very far away.

"I love you enough for anything," said Winn, gravely.

"Tell me," she whispered, "did you ever even think—you liked her as much?"

Winn looked puzzled; it took him a few minutes to guess whom she meant, then he said wonderingly:

"My wife, you mean?"

Claire nodded. It was silly how the little word tore its way into her very heart; she had to bite her lips to keep herself from crying out. She did not realize that the word was meaningless to him.

"No," said Winn, gravely; "that's the worst of it. I must have been out of my head. It was a fancy. Of course I thought it was all right, but I didn't care. It was fun rather than otherwise; you know what I mean? I'm afraid I gave her rather a rotten time of it; but fortunately she doesn't like me at all. It's not surprising."

"Yes, it is," said Claire, firmly; "it's very surprising. But if she doesn't care for you, and you don't care for her, can't anything be done?"

There is something cruel in the astonishing ease with which youth believes in remedial measures. It is a cruelty which reacts so terribly upon its possessors.

Winn hesitated; then he told her that he would take her to the ends of the world. Claire pushed away the ends of the world; they did not sound very practical.

"I mean," she said, "have you got to consider anybody else? Of course there's Maurice and your people, I've thought of them. But I don't think they'd mind so awfully always, do you? It wouldn't be like robbing or cheating some one who really needed us. We couldn't do that, of course."