He bought her flowers and chocolates, though he had a pang about the chocolates, not feeling quite sure that they were good for her; but flowers were safe.
He didn't give her lilies—they seemed too self-consciously virginal, as if they wanted to rub it in—he gave her crimson roses, flowers that frankly enjoyed themselves and were as beautiful as they could be. They were like Claire herself. She never stopped to consider an attitude; she just went about flowering all over the place in a kind of perpetual fragrance.
She enjoyed herself so much that she simply hadn't time to notice any one in particular. There were a dozen men always about her. She was so young and happy and unintentional that every one wanted to be with her. It was like sitting in the sun.
She never muddled things up or gave needless pain or cheated. That was what Winn liked about her. She was as fair as a judge without being anything like so grave.
They were all playing a game, and she was the leader. They would have let her break the rules if she had wanted to break them! but she wouldn't have let herself.
Of course the hotel didn't approve of her; no hotel could be expected to approve of a situation which it so much enjoyed. Besides Claire was lawless; she kept her own rules, but she broke everybody else's. She never sought a chaperon or accepted some older woman's sheltering presence; she never sat in the ladies' salon or went to tea with the chaplain's wife. On one dreadful occasion she tobogganed wilfully on a Sunday, under the chaplain's nose, with a man who had arrived only the night before.
When old Mrs. Stewart, who knitted regularly by the winter and counted almost as many scandals as stitches, took her up on the subject out of kindness of heart, Claire had said without meaning to be rude:
"I really don't think the chaplain's nose ought to be there, to be under, do you?"
Of course, Mrs. Stewart did. She had the highest respect for the chaplain's nose; but it wasn't the kind of subject you could argue about.
For a long time Claire and Winn never really talked; she threw words at him over her shoulder or in the hall or when he put her skates on or took them off at the rink. He seemed to get there quicker than any one else, though the operation itself was sometimes a little prolonged. Of course there were meals, but meals belonged to Maurice, and Claire had a way of always slipping behind him, so that it was really over the skates that Winn discovered how awfully clever she was.