mirably free and
happy life with parents who were his dearest friends, and with a friend
who was to him a hero beyond the need of definition.

Still, he wouldn't have shrunk from talking about Winn with Estelle. It
was her right to talk about him, her splendid, perfect privilege. He
supposed that she was a little shy, because she seemed to slip away from
their obvious great topic; but he wished, if she wasn't going to talk
about Winn, she would leave his people alone.

She tried to sympathize with him about his home difficulties, and when
she discovered that he hadn't any, her sympathy veered to the horrible
distance he had to be away from it.

"Oh, well," said Lionel, "it's my father's old regiment, you know; that
makes it awfully different. They know as much about my life as I do
myself, and when I don't get leave, they often come out to me for a
month or two. They're good travelers."

"They must be simply wonderful!" Estelle said ecstatically. Lionel said
nothing. He looked slightly amazed. It seemed so funny that Winn, who
hadn't much use for ecstasy, should have married a so easily ecstatic
wife.

"I do envy you," she said pathetically, "all that background of home
companionship. We were brought up so differently. It was not my parents'
fault of course--" she added rather quickly. Something in Lionel's
expression warned her that he would be unsympathetic to confidences
against parents.

"Well, you've got Winn," he said, looking at her with his steadfast
encouraging eyes, "you've got your background now." He was prepared to
put up with a little ecstasy on this subject, but Estelle looked away
from him, her great eyes strangely wistful and absorbed. She was an
extraordinary exquisite and pretty little person, like a fairy on a
Christmas tree, or a Dresden china shepherdess, not a bit, somehow, like
a wife.

"Yes," she said, twisting her wedding ring round her tiny manicured
finger. "But sometimes I am a little anxious about him--I know it's
silly of me."

Lionel's shyness fell away from him with disconcerting suddenness. "Why
are you anxious?" he demanded. "What do you mean, Mrs. Winn?"

Estelle hesitated, she hadn't meant to say exactly what her fear was,
she only wanted to arouse the young man's chivalry and to talk in some
way that approached intimacy.

Everything must have a beginning, even Petrarch and Laura.

She found Lionel's eyes fixed upon her with a piercing quality difficult
to meet. He obv