“And I’ve got a son,” Winn continued. “His name is Peter – after my father, you know.”

“That’s a good thing,” she concurred heartily. “I’m glad you’ve got a son.”

“Unfortunately,” said Winn, “my marriage didn’t exactly come off. We got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

“Ah,” said Miss Marley, “that’s a pity! The right end of the stick is, I believe, almost essential in marriage.”

“Yes,” Winn acknowledged; “I see that now, of course. I was keen on getting her, but I hadn’t thought the rest out. Rather odd, isn’t it, that you don’t get as much as a tip about how jolly a thing could be till you’ve dished yourself from having it?”

Miss Marley agreed that it was rather odd.

Winn came back swiftly to his point.

“What I was going to ask you,” he said, holding her with his eyes, “is to sit at my table for a bit. I happen to have two young friends of mine over from Davos. He’s her brother, of course, but I thought I’d like to have another woman somewhere about. Look better, wouldn’t it? She’s only nineteen.”

His voice dropped as he mentioned Claire’s age as if he were speaking of the Madonna.

“Yes,” agreed Miss Marley, “it would look better.”

“I dare say,” said Winn after rather a long pause, “you see what I mean? The idea is – our idea, you know – to be together as much as we can for a fortnight. It’ll be all right, of course; only I rather wondered if you’d see us through.”

“See you through being all right?” Miss Marley asked with the directness of a knife-thrust.

“Well – yes,” said Winn. “It would just put people off thinking things. Everybody seems to know you up here, and I somehow thought I’d rather you knew.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Marley, briefly.

She turned back to the fire again. She had seen all she wanted to see in Winn’s eyes. She saw his intention. What she wasn’t sure about was the fortnight. A fortnight can do a good deal with an intention.

Miss Marley knew the world very well. People had often wanted to use her for a screen before, and generally she had refused, believing that the chief safeguard of innocence is the absence of screens. But she saw that Winn did not want her to be that kind of a screen; he wanted her to be in the center of his situation without touching it. He wanted her for Claire, but he wanted her also a little for himself, so that he might feel the presence of her upright friendliness. He intensely trusted her.

There are people who intend to do good in the world and invariably do harm. They enter eagerly into the lives of others and put their fingers pressingly upon delicate machinery; very often they destroy it, more seldom, unfortunately, they cut their own fingers. Miss Marley did not belong to this type. She did not wish to be involved and she was scrupulous never to involve others. She hesitated before she gave her consent, but she couldn’t withstand the thought that Claire was only nineteen. She spoke at last.

“What you suggest,” she said quietly, “is going to be rather hard for you both. I suppose you do realize how hard? You see, you are only at the beginning of the fortnight now. Unhappy men and very young girls make difficult situations, Major Staines.”

He got up and walked to the window, standing with his back to her. She wondered if she had said too much; his back looked uncompromising. She did not realize that she could never say too much in the defense of Claire. Then he said, without looking round:

“We shall have to manage somehow.”

It occurred to Miss Marley, with a wave of reassurance, that this was probably Winn’s usual way of managing.

“In any case,” she said firmly, “you can count on me to do anything you wish.”

Winn expressed no gratitude. He merely said:

“I shall introduce her to you this evening.”

Before he left Miss Marley he shook hands with her. Her hands were hard and muscular, but she realized when she felt his grip that he must have been extremely grateful.

CHAPTER XXIV

They went out early, before the sun was up, when the valley was an apricot mist and the mountains were as white as snowdrops in the spring. The head waiter fell easily into their habits, and provided them with an early breakfast and a parcel for lunch. Then they drove off through the biting, glittering coldness.

Sometimes they went far down the valley to Sils and on to the verge of the Maloja. Sometimes they drove through the narrower valleys to Pontresina and on into the impenetrable winter gloom of the Mortratsch glacier. The end was the same solitude, sunshine, and their love. The world was wrapped away in its winter stillness. The small Swiss villages slept and hardly stirred. In the hot noonday a few drowsy peasants crept to and from the barns where the cattle passed their winter life. Sometimes a woman labored at a frozen pump, or a party of skiers slipped rapidly through the shady streets, rousing echoes with their laughter; but for the most part they were as much alone as if the world had ceased to hold any beings but themselves. The pine-trees scented all the air, the snow dripped reluctantly, and sometimes far off they heard the distant boom of an avalanche. They sat together for long sunlit hours on the rickety wooden balcony of a friendly hospice, drinking hot spiced glüwein and building up their precarious memories.

There were moments when the hollow present snapped under their feet like a broken twig, and then the light in their eyes darkened and they ran out upon the safer path of make-believe.

It was Winn who, curiously enough, began it, and returned to it oftenest. It came to him, this abolishing of Estelle, always more easily than it came to Claire. It was inconceivable to Claire that Winn didn’t, as a rule, remember his wife. She could have understood the tragedy of his marriage, but Winn didn’t make a tragedy of it, he made nothing of it at all. It seemed terrible to Claire that any woman, bearing his name, the mother of his child, should have no life in his heart. She found herself resenting this for Estelle. She tried to make Winn talk about her, so that she might justify her ways to him. But Winn went no further in his expressions than the simple phrases, “She’s not my sort,” “We haven’t anything in common,” “I expect we didn’t hit it off.” Finally he said, terribly, under the persistency of Claire’s pressure, “Well, if you will have it, I don’t believe a single word she says.”

“Oh, but sometimes, sometimes she must speak the truth!” Claire urged, breathless with pity.

“I dare say,” Winn replied indifferently. “Possibly she does, but what difference does it make to me when I don’t know which times?”

Claire waited a little, then she said:

“I wasn’t thinking of the difference to you; I was thinking of the difference to her.”

“I tell you,” Winn repeated obstinately, “that I don’t care a hang about the difference to her. People shouldn’t tell lies. I don’t care that for her!” He snapped a crumb off the table. He looked triumphantly at Claire, under the impression that he had convinced her of a pleasing fact. She burst into tears.

He tried to take her in his arms, but for a moment she resisted him.

“Do you want me to love Estelle?” he asked in desperation.

Claire shook her head.

“I’d like her – to be loved,” she said, still sobbing.

Winn looked wonderingly at her.

“Well, as far as that goes, so would I,” he observed, with a sardonic grin. “There’d be some way out for us then.”

Claire shook her head vehemently, but she made no attempt to explain her tears. She felt that she couldn’t alter him, and that when he most surprised her it was wiser to accept these surprises than to probe her deep astonishment.

He surprised her very often, he was in such a hurry to unburden himself of all he was. It seemed to him as if he must tell her everything while he had her. He expressed himself as he had never in his wildest dreams supposed that any man could express himself to another human being. He broke down his conventions, he forced aside his restraint, he literally poured out his heart to her. He gave her his opinions, his religion, his codes of conduct, until she began a little to understand his attitude toward Estelle.