"But that's not the reason," Claire went on, slightly softened by her victory, "that I dislike her. I really dislike her because I think she is bad for Maurice; but perhaps you haven't noticed the way he keeps hanging about her. It makes me sick."
Winn admitted that he had noticed it.
"Still," he said, "of course if you hadn't proved to me that by being horrid she couldn't be pretty, I should have supposed that he simply hung about Mrs. Bouncing because she was—well, not precisely plain."
Claire looked doubtfully at him, but he wasn't smiling; he was merely looking at her with sufficient attention.
"There are only two of us," she said in a low voice, "Maurice and me, and I do so awfully want him to be a success. I don't think anybody else does. I don't even know how much he wants it himself. You see, Maurice is so young in many ways, and our people having died—he hasn't had much of a chance, has he? Men ought to have fathers."
Winn listened intently; he always remembered anything she said, but this particular opinion sank deep into the bottom of his heart: "Men ought to have fathers."
"I've done the best I can," Claire went on, "but you see, I'm young, too; there are lots of things I don't really know about life. I think perhaps I sometimes believe too much that things are going to be jolly, and that makes me a bad adviser for Maurice. Do you know what I mean?"
Winn nodded, but he determined that whether she expected or not, she should have things jolly. He must be able to manage it. If one wanted a thing as much as he wanted this, surely one could bring it off.
Hadn't he pulled off races on the scratchiest of polo ponies, when he couldn't afford better, out of sheer intention? He had meant to win, moved the pony along, and won. Was life less controllable than a shoddy polo pony?
He set his mouth and stared grimly out over the sparkling snow. He did not ask himself how a man with a wife hung round his neck like a millstone was going to manage the perpetual happiness of a stray young woman. He never asked himself questions or saw how things were to be done, but when the crisis came his instinct taught him in a flash the short cut to victory.