"Oh, come now," said Winn, who associated tragedy solely with police courts and theaters. "It's not so bad as all that, is it? We can rub along, you know. I dare say I've been rather a brute, but I shall be a lot better company when I'm back in the regiment. We must buck up, that's all! I don't like to bother you about it, but I think you'd see things differently if we had a kid. I do really. I've seen heaps of scratch marriages turn out jolly well—when the kids began to come!"
"How can you be so disgustingly coarse!" shuddered Estelle. "Besides, I'm far too delicate! Not that you would care if I died! You'd just marry again!"
"Oh, no! I shouldn't do that," said Winn in his horrid quiet way which might mean anything. He got up and walked to the window. "You wouldn't die," he observed with his back turned to her. "You'd be a jolly sight stronger all the rest of your life! I asked Travers!"
"Oh!" she cried, "you don't mean to tell me that you talked me over with that disgusting red-faced man!"
"I don't talk people over," said Winn without turning round. "He's a doctor. I asked his opinion!"
"Well," she said, "I think it was horrible of you—and—and most ungentlemanly. If I'd wanted to know, I'd have found out for myself. I haven't the slightest confidence in regimental doctors."
Winn said nothing. One of the things Estelle most disliked in him was the way in which it seemed as if he had some curious sense of delicacy of his own. She wanted to think of Winn as a man impervious to all refinement, born to outrage the nicer susceptibility of her own mind, but there were moments when it seemed as if he didn't think the susceptibilities of her mind were nice at all. He was not awed by her purity.
He didn't say anything of course, but he let certain subjects prematurely drop.
Suddenly he turned round from the window and fixed his eyes on hers. She thought he was going to be very violent, but he wasn't, he talked quite quietly, only something hard and bright in his eyes warned her to be careful.
"Look here," he said, "I've thought of something, a kind of bargain! I'll give in to you about this job, if you'll give in to me about the other! It's no use fighting over things, is it?