She remembered afterwards that as she lay in the dark and foresaw her loneliness she wondered if she wouldn't after all risk the Indian frontier to be near him? She was subsequently glad she had decided that she wouldn't. It was a very wet morning, and Lionel was to leave before lunch. Winn went as usual into his study to play with his eternal experiments in leather. Lionel went with him. She heard the two men laughing together down the passage. Could real friends have laughed if they had minded parting with each other? She sat at her desk in the drawing-room biting nervously at her pen. He was going; was it possible that there would be no farewell? Just some terrible flat hand-shake at the door under Winn's penetrating eyes. But after a time she heard steps returning. Lionel came by himself. "Are you busy?" he asked. "Shall I bother you if we talk a little?" "No," she said softly. "I hoped you would come back." Lionel did not answer for a moment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was really a little stirred. He moved about the room restlessly, he wouldn't sit down, though half unconsciously she had put her hand on the chair beside her. "Do you know," he said at last, "I've got something to say to you, and I'm awfully afraid it may annoy you." Was it really coming, the place at which he would have to be stopped, after all her fruitless endeavors to get him to move in any direction at all? It looked like it; he was very obviously embarrassed and flushed; he did not even try to meet her eyes. "The fact is," he went on, "I simply can't go without saying it, and you've been so awfully good to me--you've let me feel we're friends." He paused, and Estelle leaned forward, her eyes melting with encouragement. "I am so glad you feel like that, Lionel," she murmured. "Do please say anything--anything you like. I shall always understand and forgive, if it is necessary for me to forgive." "You're awfully generous," he said gratefully. She smiled, and put out her hand again toward the chair. This time he sat down in it, but he turned it to face her. He was a big man and he seemed to fill the room in which they sat. His blue-gray eyes fixed themselves on hers intently, his whole being seemed absorbed in what he was about to say. "You see," he began, "I think you may be making a big mistake. Naturally Winn's awfully fond of you and all that and you've just started life, and you like to live in your own country, surrounded by jolly little things, and perhaps India seems frightening and far away." Estelle shrank back a little; he put his hand on the back of her chair soothingly. "Of course it must be hard," he said. "Only I want to explain it to you. Winn's heart is yours, I know, but it's in his work, too, as a man's must be, and his work's out there; it's not here at all.