tary that it seemed to Lionel as if, at times, it might
easily have no existence.

Lionel walked a little in front of Winn; the snow was soft and made
heavy going. At the corner of the valley he turned to wait for Winn, and
then he remembered the fanciful legend of New Year's eve, for he saw
Winn's face very set and white, and his eyes looked as if the presence
of death was in them--turned toward Davos.

CHAPTER XVII

Winn was under the impression that he could stand two or three days,
especially if he had something practical to do. What helped him was the
condition of Mr. Bouncing. Mr. Bouncing had suddenly retired. He had a
bedroom on the other side of Winn's, and a sitting-room connected it
with his wife's; but Mrs. Bouncing failed increasingly to take much
advantage of this connection. Her theory was that, once you were in bed,
you were better left alone.

Mr. Bouncing refused to have a nurse; he said they were disagreeable
women who wouldn't let you take your own temperature. This might have
seemed to involve the services of Mrs. Bouncing; but they were taken up
for the moment by a bridge drive.

"People do seem to want me so!" she explained plaintively to Winn in the
corridor. "And I have a feeling, you know, Major Staines, that in a
hotel like this it's one's duty to make things go."

"Some things go without much making," said Winn, significantly. He was
under the impression that one of these things was Mr. Bouncing.

Winn made it his business, since it appeared to be nobody else's, to
keep an eye on Mr. Bouncing: in the daytime he sat with him and ran his
errands; at night he came in once or twice and heated things for Mr.
Bouncing on a spirit lamp.

Mr. Bouncing gave him minute directions, and scolded him for leaving
milk exposed to the menaces of the air and doing dangerous things with a
teaspoon. Nevertheless, he valued Winn's company.

"You see," he explained to Winn, "when you can't sleep, you keep coming
up to the point of dying. It's very odd, the point of dying, a kind of
collapsishness that won't collapse. You say to yourself, 'I can't feel
any colder than this,' or, 'I must have more breath,' or, 'This lung is
bound to go if I cough much more.' And the funny part of it is, you do
go on getting colder, and your breath breaks like a rotten thread, and
you never stop coughing, and yet you don't go! I dare say I shall be
quite surprised when I do. Then when you come in and give me warm, dry