Still, there it was. He did feel lonely; probably it was one of the symptoms of bad lungs which Travers had n't mentioned, the same kind of thing as the perfectly new desire to lean back in his corner and shut his eyes.

He felt all right in a way, and his muscles acted; but there was a blurred sensation behind everything, a tiresome, unaccountable feeling, as if he might n't always be able to do things. He could n't explain it exactly; but if it really turned up at all formidably later, he intended to shoot himself quickly before Peter got old enough to care.

One thing he had quite made up his mind about: he would get well if he could; but if he could n't, he was n't going to be looked after. The mere thought of it drove him into the corridor, where he spent the night alternately walking up and down and sitting on an extremely uncomfortable small seat by a drafty door to prove to himself that he was n't in the least tired.

He began to feel rather better after the coffee at Basle, and though he was hardly the kind of person to take much interest in mere scenery, the small Swiss villages, with their high pink or blue, clock-faced churches, made him wish he could pack them into a box, with a slice of green mountain behind, and send them to Peter to play with.

After Landeck he smelt the snows, and challenged successfully the whole shivering carriage on the subject of an open window. The snows reminded Winn in a jolly way of Kashmir and nights spent alone on dizzy heights in a Dak bungalow.

The valleys ceased slowly to breathe; the dull autumn coloring sank into the whiteness of a dream. The mountains rose up on all sides, wave upon wave of frozen foam, aiming steadily at the high, clear skies. The half-light of the failing day covered the earth with a veil of silver and retreating gold.

mysteriously behind a line of black firtrees, sending shafts of blue light into the hollow cups of mountain gorges. The mountains receded a little, and everything became part of a white hollow filled with black fir-trees, and beyond the fir-trees a blue lake as blue as an Indian moonstone, and then one by one, with the unexpectedness of a flight of glow-worms, sparkled the serried ranks of the hotels. Out they flashed, breaking up the mystery, defying the mountains, as insistent and strident as life.

The train stopped, and its contents spilled themselves out a little uncertainly and stiffly on the platform. Instantly the cold caught them, not the insidious, subtle cold of lower worlds, but the fresh, brisk buffet of the Alps.

It caught them by the throat and chest, it tingled in ears and noses; there was no menace in it, and no weakness. It was as compulsory as a policeman in a street fight.

Winn had just stepped aside to allow a clamorous lady to take possession of his porter when he saw a man struggle into the light under a lamp-post; he was carrying something very carefully in his arms.

Winn could not immediately make out what it was, but he saw the man's face and read utmost mortal misery in his eyes; then he discovered that the burden was a woman. Her hands were so thin that they lay like broken flower petals on the man's shoulders; her face was nothing but a hollow shell; her eyes moved, so that Winn knew she was alive, and in the glassy stillness of the air he caught her dry, whispering voice. "I am not really tired, dearest," she murmured. In a moment they had vanished. It struck Winn as very curious that people could love each other like that, or that a dying woman should fight her husband's fears with her last strength. He felt horribly sorry for them and impatient with himself for feeling sorry. After all, he had not come up to Davos to go about all over the place feeling sorry for strange people to whom part of it was that he did n't only feel sorry for them, he felt a little sorry for himself. Was love really like that? And had he missed it? Well, of course he knew he had missed it; only he had n't realized that it was quite like that.

Fortunately at this moment a German porter appeared to whom Winn felt an instant simple antagonism. He was a self-complacent man, and he brought Winn the wrong luggage.

"Look here, my man," Winn said smoothly, but with a rocky insistence behind his words, "if you don't look a little sharp and bring me the right boxes with green labels, I shall have to kick you into the middle of next week."

This restored Winn even more quickly than it restored his luggage. No one followed him into the small stuffy omnibus which glided off swiftly toward its destination. The hotel was an ugly wooden house in the shape of a hive, built out with balconies; it reminded Winn of a gigantic bird-cage handsomely provided with perches. It was only ten o'clock, but the house was as silent as the mountains behind it.

The landlord appeared, and, leading Winn into a brilliantly lighted, empty room, offered him cold meat.

Winn said the kind of thing that any Staines would feel called upon to say on arriving at a cold place at a late hour and being confronted with cold meat.

The landlord apologized in a whisper, and returned after some delay with soup. Nothing, not even more language, could move him beyond soup. He kept saying that it was late and that they must be quiet, and he did n't seem to believe Winn when Winn remarked that he had n't come up there to be quiet. Winn himself became quieter as he followed the landlord through interminable passages covered with linoleum where his boots made a noise like muffled thunder.

Everywhere there was a strange sense of absolute cleanliness and silence, the subduing smell of disinfectant and the sight of padded, green felt doors.

When Winn was left alone in a room

like a vivid cell, all emptiness and electric light, and with another green door leading into a farther room, he became aware of a very faint sound that came from the other side of the door. It was like the bark of a dog shut up in a distant cellar; it explained to Winn the padding of the doors.

In all the months that followed, Winn never lost this sound, near or far; it was always with him, seldom shattering and harsh, but always sounding as if something were being broken gradually, little by little shaken into pieces by some invisible disintegrating power.

Winn flung open the long window which faced the bed. It led out to a small private balcony, -if he had to be out on a balcony, he had of course made a point of its being private, and looked over all Davos.

The lights were nearly gone now. Only two or three twinkled in a narrow circle on a sheet of snow; behind them the vague shapes of the mountains hung immeasurably alien and at peace.

A bell rang out through the still air with a deep, reverberating note. It was a reassuring and yet solemn sound, as if it alone were responsible for humanity, for all the souls crowded together in the tiny valley, striving for their separate, shaken, inconclusive lives.

"An odd place - Davos," Winn thought to himself. "No idea it was like this. Sort of mix-up between a picnic and a cemetery."

And then suddenly somebody laughed. The sound came from a slope of mountain behind the hotel, and through the dark Winn's quick ear caught the sound of a light rushing across the snow. Some one must be tobogganing out there, some one very young and gay and incorrigibly certain of joy. Winn hoped he should hear Peter laughing like that later on. It was such a jolly boy's laugh, low, with a mischievous chuckle in it, elated and very disarming.

He hoped the child would n't get hauled up for being out so late and making a noise. He smiled as he thought that the owner of the voice, even if collared, would probably be up to getting out of his trouble; and when he turned in, he was still smiling.

CHAPTER VII

DR. GURNET's house was like an eye, or a pair of super-vigilant eyes, stationed between Davos Dorf and Davos Platz.

It stood, a small brown chalet, perched high above the lake. There was nothing on either side of it but the snow, the sunshine, and the sense of its vigilance; inside, from floor to ceiling, there were neat little cases with the number of the year, and in each year there was a complete, exhaustive, and entertaining history of those who wintered, unaware of its completion and entertainment, in either of the villages. No eye but his own saw these documents, but no secret policeman ever so controlled the inner workings of a culprit's mind. There was nothing in Dr. Gurnet himself that led one to believe in his piercing quality. He was a stout little man, with a high-domed, bald head, long arms, short legs, and whitish blue eyes which had the quality of taking in everything they saw without giving anything out.

Sometimes they twinkled, but the twinkle was in most cases for his own consumption; he disinfected even his jokes so that they were never catching. The consulting-room contained no medical books. There were two book-shelves, on one side psychology from the physical point of view, and in the other book-case psychology as understood by the leading lights of the Catholic religion.

Dr. Gurnet was fond of explaining to his more intelligent patients that here you had the two points of view.

"Psychology is like alcohol," he observed: "you may have it with soda-water or without. Religion is the soda-water." Two tiger-skins lay on the floor. Dr. Gurnet was a most excellent shot. He was too curious for fear, though he always asserted that he disliked danger, and took every precaution to avoid it, excepting, of course, giving up the thing which he had

set out to do. But it was a fact that his favorites among his patients were, as a rule, those who loved danger for its own sake without curiosity and without fear.

He saw at a glance that Winn belonged to this category. Names were like pocket electric lamps to Dr. Gurnet. He switched them on and off to illuminate the dark places of the earth. He held Winn's card in his hand, and recalled that he had known a former colonel of his regiment.

"A very distinguished officer," he remarked, "of a very distinguished regiment. Probably perfectly unknown in England. England has a preference for worthless men while they live and a tenderness for them after they are dead unless corrected by other nations. It is an odd thing to me that men like Colonel Travers and yourself, for instance, care to give up your lives to an empire that is like a badly deranged stomach with a craving for unhealthy objects."

"We have n't got to think about it," said Winn. "We keep the corner we are in quiet."

"Yes," said Dr. Gurnet, sympathetically, "I know; but I think it would be better if you had to think about it. Perhaps it would n't be necessary to keep things quiet if they were more thoroughly exposed to thought."

Winn's attention wandered to the tigerskins.

"Did you bag those fellows yourself?" he asked. Dr. Gurnet smilingly agreed. After this Winn did n't so much mind having his chest examined.

But the examination of his chest, though a long and singularly thorough operation, seemed to Dr. Gurnet a mere bead strung on an extended necklace. He had n't any idea, as the London specialist had had, that Winn could only have one organ and one interest. He came upon him with the effect of bouncing out from behind a screen with a series of funny, flat little questions. Sometimes Winn thought he was going to be angry with him, but he never was. There was a blithe impersonal touch in Dr. Gurnet, a smiling willingness to look on private his tories as of less importance than last year's newspapers. It was as if he airily explained to his patients that really they had better put any facts there were on the files, and let the housemaid use the rest for the kitchen fire; and he required very little on Winn's part. From a series of reluctant monosyllables he built up a picturesque and reliable structure of his new patient's life. They were n't by any means all physical questions. He wanted to know if Winn knew German. Winn said he did n't, and added that he did n't like Germans.

"Then you should take some pains to understand them," observed Dr. Gurnet. "Not to understand the language of an enemy is the first step toward defeat. Why, it is even necessary sometimes to understand one's friends."

Winn said that he had a friend he understood perfectly; his name was Lionel Drummond.

"I know him through and through," he explained; "that 's why I trust him." Dr. Gurnet looked interested, but not convinced.

"Ah," he said, "personally I should n't trust any man till he was dead. You know where you are then, you know. Before that one prophesies. By the by, are you married?" Dr. Gurnet did not raise his eyes at this question, but before Winn's leaden "Yes" had answered him he had written on the case paper, "Unhappy domestic life."

"And-er-your wife 's not here with you?" Dr. Gurnet suavely continued. Winn thought himself non-committal when he confined himself to saying:

"No; she 's in England with my boy." He was as non-committal for Dr. Gurnet as if he had been a wild elephant. He admitted Peter with a change of voice, and asked eagerly if things with lungs were hereditary or catching?

manded. "Shall I be a broken-winded, cats'-meat hack?"

Dr. Gurnet shook his head.

"You can go back to your regiment," he said, "and do anything you like bar pig-sticking and polo in a year's time. That is to say, if you do as you are told for that year and will have the kindness to remember that, if you do not, I am not responsible, nor shall I be in any great degree inconsolable. I am here like a sign-post; my part of the business is to point the road. I really don't care if you follow it or not; but I should be desolate, of course, if you followed it and did n't arrive. This, however, has not yet occurred to me.

"You will be out of doors nine hours a day, and kindly fill in this card for me. You may skate, but not skee or toboggan, nor take more than four hours' active exercise out of the twenty-four. In a month's time I shall be pleased to see you. Remember about the German and-er-do you ever flirt?"

Winn stared ominously.

"Flirt? No," he said. "Why the devil should I?"

Dr. Gurnet gave a peculiar little smile, half quizzical and half kindly.

"Well," he said, "I sometimes recommend it to my patients in order that they may avoid the intenser application known as falling in love; or in cases like your own, for instance, when a considerable amount of beneficial cheerfulness may be arrived at by a careful juxtaposition of the sexes. You follow me?"

"No, hanged if I do," said Winn. "I've told you I 'm married, have n't I? Besides, I dislike women."

women without going to extremes. In fact, if I may say so, women impart their most favorable attributes solely under these conditions. Good morning."

Winn left the small brown house with a heart that was strangely light. Of course he did n't believe in doctors any more than Sir Peter did, but he found himself believing that he was going to get well.

All the morning he had been moving his mind in slow waves that did not seem like thoughts against the rock of death; but he came away from the tiger-skins and the flickering laughter of Dr. Gurnet's eyes with a comfortable sense of having left all such questions on the door-step. He thought instead of whether it was worth while to go down to the rink before lunch or not.

It was while he was still undecided as to this question that he heard a little shriek of laughter. It ran up the scale like three notes on a flute; he knew in a moment that it was the same laughter he had listened to the night before.

He turned aside and found himself at the bend of a long ice run leading down to the lake. A group of men were standing there, and with one foot on a toboggan, her head flung back, her eyes full of sparkling mischief, was the child. He forgot that he had ever thought her a boy, though she looked on the whole as if she would like to be thought one. Her curly auburn hair was short and very thick, and perched upon it was a round scarlet cap; her mouth was scarlet; her eyes were like Scotch braes, brown and laughing; the curves of her long, delicate lips ran upward; her curving thin, black eyebrows were like question-marks; her chin was tilted upward like the petal of a flower. She was very slim, and wore a very short brown skirt which revealed the slenderest of feet and ankles; a sweater clung to her unformed, lithe little figure. She had an air of pointed sharpness and firmness like a lifted sword. She might have been sixteen, though she was, as a matter of fact, three years older; but she was not so much an age as a sensation-the sensa

tion of youth, incredibly arrogant and unharmed. The men were trying to dissuade her from the run. It had just been freshly iced; the long blue line of it curved as hard as iron in and out under banks of ice far down into the valley. A tall boy beside her, singularly like her in features and coloring, but weaker in fiber and expression, said querulously:

"Don't go and make a fool of yourself, Claire. It's a man's run, not a girl's. I won't have you do it." It was the fatal voice of authority without power.

Across the group her eyes met Winn's; wicked and gay they ran over him and into him. He stuck his hands into his pockets and stared back at her grimly, like a Staines. He was n't going to say anything; only if she had belonged to him he would have stopped her. His eyes said he could have stopped her; but she did n't belong to him, so he set his square jaw, and gave her his unflinching, indifferent disapproval.

She appeared after this to be unaware of him, and turned to her brother.

"Won't have it?" she said, with a little gurgle of laughter. "Why, how do you suppose you can stop me? There's only one way of keeping a man's run for men, and that's for girls not to be able to use it-see!"

She slipped her teasing foot off the toboggan, and with an agile twist of her small body sprang face downward on the board. In an instant she was off, lying along it as light as a feather, but holding the runners in a grip of steel. In a moment more she was nothing but a traveling black dot far down the valley, lifting to the banks, swirling lightning swift back into the straights in a series of curves and flashes, till at the end the toboggan, girl and all, swung high into the air, and subsided safely into a snow-drift.

Winn turned and walked away; he was n't going to applaud her. Something burned in his heart, grave and angry, stubborn and very strong. It was as if a strange substance had got into him, and he could n't in the least have said what it It voiced itself for him in his say