all such fun."

But Winn was inclined to think that there might be more fun where there
were fewer candidates for it. There was, for instance, Mr. Roper.
Maurice was trying to work up for his final examination at Sandhurst
with Mr. Roper. He was a black-haired, polite man with a constant smile
and a habit of agreeing with people much too promptly; also he read
books and talked to Claire about them in the evening till every one
started bridge. Fortunately, that shut him up.

Winn was considered in Anglo-Indian clubs, where the standard of bridge
is high, to play considerably above it, and Claire played with a relish,
that was more instinctive than reliable; nevertheless, Winn loved
playing with her, and accepted Mr. Roper and Maurice as one accepts
severity of climate on the way to a treat. He knew he must keep his
temper with them both, so when he wanted to be nasty he looked at
Claire, and when Claire looked at him he wanted to be nice. He couldn't,
of course, stop Claire from ever in any circumstances glancing in the
direction of Mr. Roper, and it would have startled him extremely if he
had discovered that Claire, seeing how much he disliked it, had reduced
this form of communion to the rarest civility; because Winn still took
for granted the fact that Claire noticed nothing.

It was the solid earth on which he stood. For some months his
consciousness of his wife had been an intermittent recognition of a
disagreeable fact; but for the first few weeks at Davos he forgot
Estelle entirely; she drifted out of his mind with the completeness of a
collar stud under a wardrobe.

He never for a moment forgot Peter, but he didn't talk about him because
it would have seemed like boasting. Even if he had said, "I have a boy
called Peter," it would have sounded as if nobody else had ever had a
boy like Peter. Besides, he didn't want to talk about himself; he wanted
to talk about Claire.

She hadn't time to tell him much; she was preparing for a skating
competition, which took several hours a day, and then in the afternoons
she skied or tobogganed with Mr. Ponsonby, a tall, lean Eton master
getting over an illness. Winn privately thought that if Mr. Ponsonby was
well enough to toboggan, he was well enough to go back and teach boys;
but this opinion was not shared by Mr. Ponsonby, who greatly preferred
staying where he was and teaching Claire.

Claire tobogganed and skied with the same thrill as she played bridge
and skated;