iously wouldn't understand if she didn't mean
anything--and she hardly knew him well enough to touch on her real
difficulties with Winn, those would have to come later.

But she must be anxious about something--she was forced into the rather
meager track of her husband's state of health.

"I don't quite know," she mused, "of course he seems perfectly
strong--but I sometimes wonder if he is as strong as he looks."

Lionel brushed her wonder aside. "Please tell me exactly what you've
noticed," he said, as if he were a police sergeant and she were some
reluctant and slightly prevaricating witness.

She hadn't, as a matter of fact, noticed anything. "He sometimes looks
terribly tired," she said a little uncertainly, "but I dare say it's all
my foolishness, Mr. Drummond. I am afraid I am inclined to be nervous
about other people's health--" Estelle sighed softly. She often accused
herself of faults which no one had discovered in her. "Winn, I am sure,
would be the first to laugh at me."

"Yes, I dare say he would," said Lionel quietly. "But I never will, Mrs.
Winn." She raised her eyes gratefully to him--at last she had succeeded
in touching him.

"You see," Lionel explained, "I care too much for him myself."

Her eyes dropped. She had a feeling that Petrarch and Laura had hardly
begun like that.

The next few days were very puzzling to Estelle; nobody behaved as she
expected them to behave, including herself. She found Lionel always
ready to accept her advances with open-hearted cordiality, but she had
to make the advances. She had not meant to do this. Her idea had been
to be a magnet, and magnets keep quite still; needles do all the moving.
But this particular needle (except that it didn't appear at all soft)
might have been made of cotton wool.

And Winn wouldn't behave at a disadvantage; he was neither tyrannical
nor jealous. He left her a great deal to Lionel, and treated her with
good-natured tolerance in private and with correct attention before his
friend.

In theory Estelle had always stated her belief in platonic friendship,
but she had never been inconvenienced by having to carry it out. One
thing had always led to another. She had imagined that Lionel (in his
relations with her) would be a happy mixture of Lancelot and Galahad.
The Galahad side of him would appear when Lancelot became
inconvenient--and the Lancelot side of him would be there to fall back
upon when Galahad got too dull. But in their a