“If you’ve let a woman in,” he explained, “you’ve got to strip yourself to get her out, no matter whether you care for her or not. The moment a woman gets caught 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?”