[Illustration: In his heart there was nothing left to which he could
compare her]

He was reading everything she knew out of his own heart; she had got
into him somehow, so that he had no need to watch for his cue.

Wherever she wanted him he was; whenever she needed the touch of his
hand or his steadiness it was ready for her. They were like the music
and words of a song, or like a leaf and the dancing air it rests upon.
They were no longer two beings; they had slipped superbly, intolerably
into one; they couldn't go wrong; they couldn't make a mistake. Where
she led he followed, indissolubly a part of her.

They swung together for the final salute. It seemed to Winn that her
heart--her happy, swift-beating, exultant heart--was in his breast, and
then suddenly, violently he remembered that she wasn't his, that he had
no right to touch her. He moved away from her, leaving her, a little
bewildered, to bow alone to the great cheering mass of people.

She found him afterward far back in the crowd, with a white face and
inscrutable eyes.

"You must come and see the speed-skaters," she urged, with her hand on
his arm. "It's the thing I told you about most. And I believe we've won
the second prize. The Russian and Pole have got the first, of course;
They were absolutely perfect, but we were rather good. Why did you rush
off, and what are you looking like that for? Is anything the matter?
You're not--" her voice faltered suddenly--"you're not angry, are you?"

"No, I'm not angry," said Winn, recklessly, "and nothing's the matter,
and I'll go wherever you want and see what you want and do what you
want, and I ran away because I was a damned fool and hate a fuss. And I
see you're going to ask me if I liked it awfully. Yes, I did; I liked it
awfully. Now are you satisfied?" He still hadn't said anything, he
thought, that mattered.

"Oh, yes," she said slowly, "of course I'm satisfied. I'm glad you liked
it awfully; I liked it awfully myself."

CHAPTER XVI

The valley of the Dischmatal lies between two rather shapeless
mountains; it leads nowhere, and there is nothing in it.

Winn gave no reason for his wish to walk there with Lionel except that
it was a quiet place for a talk. They had been together for twenty-four
hours and so far they had had no talk. Lionel had expected to find a
change in Winn; he had braced himself to meet the shock of seeing the
strongest man he knew pitilessly weakened under an insidio