Mrs. Bouncing reddened.
“Oh,” she said, “I know; I didn’t mean any harm by that. You can’t help young men taking a fancy to you, can you? At least I can’t. It looked better didn’t it, in a way — you know what I mean. I didn’t want people to think anything. If only George hadn’t been so good to me! I don’t suppose you can understand, but it makes it worse when they are.”
It seemed to Winn as if he could understand, but he didn’t say so. Bouncing should have pulled her up. Winn always believed in people being pulled up. The difficulty lay in knowing how to carry the process out. It had seemed to Mr. Bouncing simpler to die.
“You’d better go to bed now,” Winn said at last. “People will be up soon. He died quite peacefully. He didn’t want you to be disturbed. I think that’s all, Mrs. Bouncing.”
She got up and went again to the bed.
“I suppose I oughtn’t to kiss him?” she whispered. “I haven’t any right to now, have I? You know what I mean? But I would have liked to kiss him.”
“Oh, I don’t believe he’d mind,” said Winn, turning away.
Mrs. Bouncing kissed him.
CHAPTER XIX
Winn felt no desire to go to bed. He went out into the long, blank corridor and wondered if the servants would be up soon and he could get anything to drink. The passage was intensely still; it stretched interminably away from him like a long, unlighted road. A vague gray light came from the windows at each end. It was too early for the shapes of the mountains to be seen. The outside world was featureless and very cold.