“I dare say not,” said Winn; “you don’t see my point. She’d be all right with you. What I want for the girl is for her to be taken care of. She hasn’t any people to speak of, and she’s up here now with a rotten, unlicked cub of a brother. I fancy she’s the kind of girl that would have a pretty hideous time with the wrong man. I’ve got to know she’s being looked after. D’ you see?”
“But why should she marry?” Lionel persisted. “Isn’t she all right as she is? What do you want to marry her off for?”
“There’ll be a man sooner or later,” Winn explained. “There always is, and she’s — well, I didn’t believe girls were innocent before. By God, when they are, it makes you sit up! I couldn’t run the risk of leaving her alone, and that’s flat! It’s like chucking matches to a child and turning your back on it.
“For after all, if a man cares about a girl the way I care about her, he does chuck her matches. When I go — some one decent ought to be there to take my place.”
“But there isn’t the slightest chance she’ll like me, even if I happened to like her,” Lionel protested. “Honestly, Winn, you haven’t thought the thing out properly. You can’t stick people about in each other’s places — they don’t fit.”
“They can be made to,” said Winn, inexorably, “if they’re the proper people. She’ll like you to start with, besides you read — authors. So does she — she’s awfully clever, she doesn’t think anything of Marie Corelli; and she likes a man. As to your taking to her — well, my dear chap, you haven’t seen her! I give you a week; I’ll hang about till then. You can tell me your decision at the end of it.”
“That’s another thing,” said Lionel. “Of course you only care for the girl, I see that, it’s quite natural, but if by any chance I did pull the thing off — what’s going to happen to you and me, afterwards? I’ve cared for that most, always.”
A Föhn wind had begun to blow up the valley — it brought with it a curious light that lay upon the snow like red dust. “I don’t say I shall like it,” Winn said after a pause. “I’m not out to like it. There isn’t anything in the whole damned job possible for me to like. But I’d a lot rather have it than any other way. I think that ought to show you what I think of you. You needn’t be afraid I’ll chuck you for seeing me through. I might keep away for a time, but I’d come back. She isn’t the kind of a woman that makes a difference between friends.”
“Oh, all right,” said Lionel after a pause, “I’ll go in for it — if I can.”
Winn got up and replaced his pipe carefully, shaking his ashes out on to the snow. “I’m sure I’m much obliged to you,” he said stiffly.