"Now," said Claire, unexpectedly, "you are looking awfully dangerous—you do rather sometimes, you know—like a kind of volcano that might go off."
Winn turned his eyes slowly toward her.
"I shall never be dangerous for you, Miss Rivers," he said gently.
He did not know how much he promised her or that he was already incapable of keeping his promise. She looked away from him with smiling lips and happy, mysterious eyes. She had known long ago that all the force he had was as safe with her as if he had laid it in her hands; safer than that, because he held it in his own—for her.
It seemed to Claire that you were only perfectly secure when you were with a man who could be dangerous to everybody else, but always safe for you.
"You will help me with Maurice?" she said softly. "Then I sha'n't feel worried any more."
"I shouldn't let it worry me for a moment if I were you," Winn assured her. "He hasn't come to much harm so far. He's young, that's all. I'll keep my eye on him, of course."
Winn knew quite well what he would do with a subaltern of Maurice's type. He would take him out shooting and put the fear of God into him. If this were done often and systematically enough, the subaltern would improve or send in his papers. But Davos did not offer equal advantages. One could not get the fear of God everywhere on a tap; besides, there was Mrs. Bouncing.
Claire turned suddenly toward him.
"I want Maurice," she said rather breathlessly, with shining eyes, "to be a good soldier; I want him to be like you."