“I don’t quite know,” she mused, “of course he seems perfectly strong — but I sometimes wonder if he is as strong as he looks.”
Lionel brushed her wonder aside. “Please tell me exactly what you’ve noticed,” he said, as if he were a police sergeant and she were some reluctant and slightly prevaricating witness.
She hadn’t, as a matter of fact, noticed anything. “He sometimes looks terribly tired,” she said a little uncertainly, “but I dare say it’s all my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous about other people’s health — ” Estelle sighed softly. She often accused herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. “Winn, I am sure, would be the first to laugh at me.”
“Yes, I dare say he would,” said Lionel quietly. “But I never will, Mrs. Winn.” She raised her eyes gratefully to him — at last she had succeeded in touching him.
“You see,” Lionel explained, “I care too much for him myself.”
Her eyes dropped. She had a feeling that Petrarch and Laura had hardly begun like that.
The next few days were very puzzling to Estelle; nobody behaved as she expected them to behave, including herself. She found Lionel always ready to accept her advances with open-hearted cordiality, but she had to make the advances. She had not meant to do this. Her idea had been to be a magnet, and magnets keep quite still; needles do all the moving. But this particular needle (except that it didn’t appear at all soft) might have been made of cotton wool.
And Winn wouldn’t behave at a disadvantage; he was neither tyrannical nor jealous. He left her a great deal to Lionel, and treated her with good-natured tolerance in private and with correct attention before his friend.
In theory Estelle had always stated her belief in platonic friendship, but she had never been inconvenienced by having to carry it out. One thing had always led to another. She had imagined that Lionel (in his relations with her) would be a happy mixture of Lancelot and Galahad. The Galahad side of him would appear when Lancelot became inconvenient — and the Lancelot side of him would be there to fall back upon when Galahad got too dull. But in their actual relation there seemed to be some important ingredient left out. Of course Lancelot was guilty and Estelle had never for a moment intended Lionel to be guilty, but on the other hand Lancelot was in love with the Queen.
This quality was really essential.