er go to bed now," Winn said at last. "People will be up
soon. He died quite peacefully. He didn't want you to be disturbed. I
think that's all, Mrs. Bouncing."

She got up and went again to the bed.

"I suppose I oughtn't to kiss him?" she whispered. "I haven't any right
to now, have I? You know what I mean? But I would have liked to kiss
him."

"Oh, I don't believe he'd mind," said Winn, turning away.

Mrs. Bouncing kissed him.

CHAPTER XIX

Winn felt no desire to go to bed. He went out into the long, blank
corridor and wondered if the servants would be up soon and he could get
anything to drink. The passage was intensely still; it stretched
interminably away from him like a long, unlighted road. A vague gray
light came from the windows at each end. It was too early for the shapes
of the mountains to be seen. The outside world was featureless and very
cold.

There was no sound in the house except the faint sound behind the green
baize doors, which never wholly ceased. Winn had always listened to it
before with an impatient distaste; he had hated to hear these echoes of
dissolution. This morning, for the first time, he felt curious.

Suppose things had gone differently; that he'd been too late, and known
his fate? He could have stayed on then; he could have accepted Claire's
beautiful young friendliness. He could have left her free; and yet he
could have seen her every day; then he would have died.

Weakness has privileges. It escapes responsibility; allowances are made
for it. It hasn't got to get up and go, tearing itself to pieces from
the roots. He could have told her about Peter and Estelle and what a
fool he had been; and at the end, he supposed, it wouldn't have mattered
if he had just mentioned that he loved her.

Now there wasn't going to be any end. Life would stretch out narrow,
interminable, and dark, like the passage with the windows at each end,
which were only a kind of blur without any light.

However, of course there was no use bothering about it; since the
servants weren't up and he couldn't get any coffee, he must just turn
in. It suddenly occurred to Winn that what he was feeling now was
unhappiness, a funny thing; he had never really felt before. It was the
kind of feeling the man had had, under the lamp-post at the station,
carrying his dying wife. The idea of a broken heart had always seemed
to Winn namby-pamby. You broke if you were weak; you didn't break if you
were strong