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.”

Then Winn remembered Peter. He told her somehow that there was Peter. He hid his face against her breast while he told her; he could not bear to see in her eyes this new knowledge of Peter.

But she was very quiet about it; it was almost as if she had always known that there was Peter.

Winn spoke very wildly after that; he denied Peter; he denied any obstacles; he spoke as if they were already safely and securely married. He explained that they had to be together; that was the long and short of it. Anything else was absurd; she must see that it was absurd.

Claire didn’t interrupt him once; but when he had quite finished, she said consideringly:

“Yes; but, after all, she gave you Peter.”

Then Winn laughed, remembering how Estelle had given him Peter. He couldn’t explain to Claire quite how funny it was.

She bore his laughter, though it surprised her a little; there seemed to be so many new things to be learned about him. Then she said:

“Anyway, we can be quite happy for a fortnight, can’t we?”

Winn raised his head and looked at her. It was his turn to be surprised.

“Maurice and I,” she explained, “have to go back in two weeks; we’ve come over here for the fortnight. So we’ll just be happy, won’t we? And we can settle what we’ll do afterward, at the end of the time.”

She spoke as if a fortnight was a long time. Then Winn kissed her; he did it with extraordinary gentleness, on the side of her cheek and on her wet curls covered with snow.

“You’re such a baby,” he said half to himself; “so it isn’t a bit of use your being as old as the hills the other part of the time. There are just about a million reasons why you shouldn’t stay, you know.”

“Oh, reasons!” said Claire, making a face at anything so trivial as a reason. Then she became very grave, and said, “I want to stay, Winn; of course I know what you mean. But there’s Maurice; it isn’t as if I were alone. And afterwards — oh, Winn, it’s because I don’t know what is going to happen afterwards — I must have now!”

Winn thought for a moment, then he said:

“Well, I’ll try and work it. You mustn’t be in the same hotel, though. Fortunately, I know a nice woman who’ll help us through; only, darling, I’m awfully afraid it’s beastly wrong for you. I mean I can’t explain properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But you’d get away; and if you stay, I’ll do the best I can but we shall get mixed up so that you’ll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you’re awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other chaps, marriage — ”

“And you,” she whispered — “you?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter a damn about me either way,” he explained carefully. “I’m stuck. But it isn’t really fair of me to let you stay. You don’t understand, but it simply isn’t fair.”