"Of course, I should prefer Eton," she said, "but I suppose you will do as you like--as usual!" Winn dropped the piece of tassel, but he persevered. "I say," he began, "don't you think we've got rather off the track? I know it's not your fault, but your being ill and my being away and all that? I don't want you to feel sore about it, you know. I want you to realize that I know I've been rather a beast to you. I don't think I'm fitted somehow for domestic life--what?" "Fitted for it!" said Estelle, tragically. "I have never known one happy moment with you! You seem incapable of any kind of chivalry! I never would have believed a man could exist who knew _less_ how to make a woman happy! It's too late to talk of it all now! I've made my supreme sacrifice. I've offered up my broken heart! I am living upon a higher plane! You would never understand anything that wasn't coarse, brutal, and low! So I shan't explain it to you. I know my duty, but I don't think after the way you have behaved I really need consider myself under any obligation to live with you again. Father Anselm agrees with me." Winn laughed. "Don't you worry about that," he hastened to assure her, "or Father Anselm either; there isn't the least necessity--and it wasn't what I meant." Estelle looked annoyed. It plainly should have been what Winn meant. "Have as much of the higher plane as you like," he went on, "only look after the boy. I'm off to London to-night, there's probably going to be some work of a kind that I can do. I mayn't be back directly. Hope you'll be all right. We can write about plans." He stood up, hesitating a little. He had an idea that it would make him feel less strange if she kissed him. Of course it was absurd, because just to have a woman's arms round his neck wasn't going to be the least like Claire. But he had a curious feeling that perhaps he might never be alone with a woman again, and he wanted to part friends with Estelle. "I wonder," he said, leaning towards her, "would you mind very much if I kissed you?" Estelle turned her head away with a little gesture of aversion. "I am sorry," she said. "I shall not willingly allow you to kiss me, but of course you are my husband--I am in your power." "By Jove," said Winn, unexpectedly, "what a little cat you are!" They were the last words he ever said to her. CHAPTER XXX For a time he could do nothing but think of his luck--it was astounding how obstacles had been swept aside for him. The best he had expected was that in the hurry of things he might get back to India without a medical examination, in the hope that his regiment would be used later. But his work at the Staff College had brought him into notice, a man conveniently died, and Winn appeared at the right moment. Within twenty-four hours of his visit to the War Office, he was attached for staff duty to a British division.