through Sandhurst properly."

Of course she hadn't meant anything. In fact, if she really had liked
him in any particular way she'd have been shot before she showed it.
What she wanted was simply the advice of an older man in the service. It
did not occur to Winn that Claire had been shot already without knowing
it.

He went on being reassured all the way back because Claire talked
persistently about tigers. Winn explained that once you thoroughly knew
where you were, there was no real danger in a tiger.

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

Winn discovered almost immediately that what assistance he could give to
Maurice would have to be indirect. He had not a light hand for weak,
evasive, and excitable people, and Maurice did not like to be driven off
the rink with "Better come along with me" or "I should think a good
brisk walk to Clavedel would be about your mark." Winn's idea of a walk
was silence and pace; he had a poor notion of small talk, and he became
peculiarly dumb with a young man whose idea of conversation was
high-pitched boasting.

When Maurice began telling stories about how he got the better of
so-and-so or the length of his ski-jumps, Winn's eyes became
unpleasantly like probes, and Maurice felt the elan of his effects
painfully ebbing away. Still, there was a certain honor in being sought
out by the most exclusive person in the hotel and Winn's requests,
stated in flat terms and with the force of his determination behind
them, were extraordinarily difficult to refuse.

It was Mr. Roper who gave Maurice the necessary stiffening. Mr. Roper
didn't like Winn, and though their intercourse had been limited to a
series of grunts on Winn's part, Mr. Roper felt something unerringly
inimical behind each of these indeterminate sounds.

"That man's a spoil-sport," he informed his pupil. Maurice agreed.

"But he's beastly difficult to say no to," he added. "You mean to
somehow, but you don't."

"I expect he's trying to manage you," Mr. Roper cleverly hinted.

This decided Maurice once and for all. He refused all further
invitations. He had a terror of being managed, and though he always was
managed, gusts of this fear would seize upon him at any effort to
influence him in any direction favorable to himself. He was never in the
least uneasy at being managed to his disadvantage.

Baffled in his main direction, Winn turned his mind upon the subject of
Mr. Roper. Mr. Roper was slippery and intensely amia