she had better not ask.

They were near the top when Winn paused suddenly and said in a most
peculiar reluctant voice; "Look here, I think I ought to tell you."

He stumbled over the words and then added, "No, by Jove, that won't do!"

"Oh, don't let's tell each other things we ought!" Claire entreated.
"It's not the kind of morning for that. I meant to talk about lots of
really important subjects, but I'm not going to now. I may later, of
course; but just now I don't feel in the mood for being important."

Winn looked at her very hard, and then he said:

"But still you are rather important, you know."

"Then," she laughed, "I'm important enough to have my own way, aren't
I?"

Winn said nothing. He seemed to acquiesce that she was important enough
for that.

"Would you like to know," she asked, "what I'd really like for lunch?"
Winn said he would awfully, and by the time she had told him they had
reached the top, and the funicular appeared, disgorging people in front
of a big glass-covered restaurant.

Winn found the best and quietest table with the finest view. From it
they could see the valley down to Frauenkirch and up to Clavedel.

It was a splendid lunch, curiously good, with sparkling sweet wine,
which Claire loved, and Winn, secretly loathing, serenely shared because
of a silly feeling he had that he must take what she did.

After lunch they sat and smoked, leaning over the great clear view. They
could hear the distant velvety boom of the village clock beneath them.
Winn gripped his hand firmly on the table.

"I've got to damned well do it," he said to himself. He remembered that
he had had once to shoot a spy in cold blood, and that he used those
words to himself before he did it.

A couple passed close to their table. The woman was over-dressed, and
hung with all kinds of jingling chains and bangles; she was pretty, and
as she sat with her profile turned a little toward them she was
curiously like Estelle. This was his opportunity. It must come now; all
the morning it had lain in the back of his mind, behind delight, behind
their laughter, like some lurking jungle creature waiting for the dark.

"Do you see that woman," he asked Claire, "the pretty one over there by
the pillar? She's awfully like--"

Claire stopped him. "Pretty!" she cried. "Do you really think she's
pretty? I think she's simply loathsome!"

Winn checked himself hurriedly; he obviously couldn't finish his
sentence with "she'