. It seemed to him as if he must tell her everything while
he had her. He expressed himself as he had never in his wildest dreams
supposed that any man could express himself to another human being. He
broke down his conventions, he forced aside his restraint, he literally
poured out his heart to her. He gave her his opinions, his religion, his
codes of conduct, until she began a little to understand his attitude
toward Estelle.

It was part of his exterior way of looking at the world at large. Up
till now people, except Lionel, had never really entered into his
imagination. Of course there were his servants and his dogs and, nearer
still, his horses. He spent hours telling her about his horses. They
really had come into his life, but never people; even his own family
were nothing but a background for wrangles.

He had never known tenderness. He had had all kinds of odd feelings
about Peter, but they hadn't got beyond his own mind. His tenderness was
beyond everything now; it over-flowed expression. It was the radical
thing in him. He showed her plainly that it would break his heart if she
were to let her feet get wet. He made plans for her future which would
have suited a chronic invalid. He wanted to give her jewels, expensive
specimens of spaniels, and a banking account.

She would take nothing from him but a notebook and a little opal ring.
Winn restrained his passion, but out of revenge for his restraint his
fancies ran wild.

It was Claire who had to be practical; she who had spent her youth in
dreams now clung desperately to facts. She read nothing, she hardly
talked, but she drew his very soul out to meet her listening soul. There
were wonders within wonders to her in Winn. She had hardly forced
herself to accept his hardness when she discovered in him a tolerance
deeper than anything she had ever seen, and an untiring patience. He had
pulled men out of holes only to see them run back into them with the
swiftness of burrowing rabbits; but nothing made him feel as if he could
possibly give them up.

"You can't tell how many new starts a man wants," he explained to
Claire; "but he ought to have as many as he can take. As long as a man
wants to get on, I think he ought to be helped."

His code about a man's conduct to women was astonishingly drastic.

"If you've let a woman in," he explained, "you've got to strip yourself
to get her out, no matter whether you care for her or not. The moment a
woman gets caug