"I've got to damned well do it," he said to himself. He remembered that he had had once to shoot a spy in cold blood, and that he used those words to himself before he did it.
A couple passed close to their table. The woman was over-dressed, and hung with all kinds of jingling chains and bangles; she was pretty, and as she sat with her profile turned a little toward them she was curiously like Estelle. This was his opportunity. It must come now; all the morning it had lain in the back of his mind, behind delight, behind their laughter, like some lurking jungle creature waiting for the dark.
"Do you see that woman," he asked Claire, "the pretty one over there by the pillar? She's awfully like—"
Claire stopped him. "Pretty!" she cried. "Do you really think she's pretty? I think she's simply loathsome!"
Winn checked himself hurriedly; he obviously couldn't finish his sentence with "she's awfully like my wife."
"Well, she sets out to be pretty, doesn't she?" he altered it rather lamely. Claire continued extremely scornful.
"Yes, I dare say," she admitted. "She may set out to be smart too, hung round with things like a Christmas-tree, but she's as common as a sixpenny bazaar. I'll tell you why I don't like her, Major Staines, and who she reminds me of, but perhaps you think her pretty, too? I mean that horrid woman, Mrs. Bouncing in our hotel?"
"But can't horrid women be pretty, too?" Winn ventured with meekness.
"No, of course not," said Claire, with great decisiveness. "Why, you know horrid men can't be handsome. Look at Mr. Roper!" Winn was uncertain if this point of knowledge had ever reached him; but he wasn't at this time of day going to look at Mr. Roper, so he gave in.
"I dare say you're right," he said. "As a matter of fact, you know, I never do look at Roper."