ht out, you can't do too much for her. It's like seeing a
dog with a tin can tied to its tail; you've got to get it off. A man
ought to pay for his fun; even if it isn't his fault, he ought to pay
just the same. It's not so much that he's the responsible person, but
he's the least _had_. That ought to settle the question."

He was more diffident, but not less decided, on the subject of religion.

"If there's a God at all," he stated, "He must be good; otherwise you
can't explain goodness, which doesn't pay and yet always seems worth
having. You know what I mean. Not that I am a religious man myself, but
I like the idea. Women certainly ought to be religious."

He hoped that Claire would go regularly to church unless it was
draughty.

It was on the Bernina, when they were nine thousand feet up in a blue
sky, beyond all sight or sound of life, in their silent, private world,
that they talked about death.

"Curious," Winn said, "how little you think about it when you're up
against it. I shouldn't like to die of an illness. That's all I've ever
felt about it; that would be like letting go. I don't think I could let
go easily; but just a proper, decent knock-out--why, I don't believe
you'd know anything about it. I never felt afraid of chucking it, till I
knew you, now I'm afraid."

Claire looked at his strong hands in the sunshine and at her own which
lay on his; they looked so much alive! She tried hard to think about
death, because she knew that some day everybody must die; but she felt
as if she was alive forever.

"Yes," she said; "of course I suppose we _shall_. But, Winn, don't you
think that we could send for each other then? Wouldn't that be
splendid?"

The idea of death became suddenly a shortening of the future; it was
like something to look forward to. Winn nodded gravely, but he didn't
seem to take the same comfort in it that Claire did. He only said:

"I dare say we could manage something. But you feel all right, don't
you?"

Claire laughed until something in his grave eyes hurt her behind her
laughter.

The sky changed from saffron to dead blue and then to startling rose
color. Flame after flame licked the Bernina heights. Their sleigh-bells
rang persistently beneath them. They drank their coffee hurriedly while
the sun sank out of the valley, and the whole world changed into an icy
light.

They drove off rapidly down the pass, wrapped in furs and clinging to
each other. They did not know what