ers; 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 coul