hen-headed chaplain's wife couldn't have heard and welcome. Would many fellows have had his chances and behaved as if they were frozen barbed-wire fences? And she'd looked at him--by Jove, she'd looked at him! Not that she'd meant anything by it; only it had been hard to have to sit on the only decent feelings he had ever had and not let them rip. And as far as Estelle was concerned, she didn't care a damn for him, and he might just as well have been a blackguard. But that wasn't quite the point, was it? Blackguards hurt girls, and he hadn't set out to hurt Claire. Well, there was no use making any song or dance about it; he'd have to go. At first he had thought he could tell her he was married--tell her as soon as the competition was over, and stay on; but he hadn't counted on the way things grew, and he didn't think now he could tell her and then hold his tongue about what he felt. If he told her, the whole thing would be out; he couldn't keep it back. There were things you knew you could do, like going away and staying away; there were others you were a fool to try. He circled slowly over the black ice surrounded by pink flames. It made him laugh, because he might have been a creature in hell. Yes, that was what hell was like, he had always known it--cold. Cold and lonely, when, if you'd only had a bit of luck, you might have been up somewhere in the sunlight, not alone. He didn't feel somehow this morning as if his marriage was an obstruction; he felt as if it were a shame. It hurt him terribly that what had driven him to Estelle could be called love, when love was this other feeling--the feeling that he'd like to be torn into little bits rather than fail Claire. He'd be ridiculous to please her; he'd face anything, suffer anything, take anything on. And it wasn't in the least that she was lovely. He didn't think about her beauty half as much as he thought about her health and the gentle, tender ways she had with sick people. He'd watched her over and over again, when she had no idea he was anywhere near, being nice to people in ways in which Winn had never dreamed before one could be nice. When people had nothing but their self-esteem left them, no attractions, no courage, no health, she'd just sit down beside them and make their self-esteem happy and comfortable. She needn't have been anything but young and gay and triumphant, but she never shirked anybody else's pain. He had puzzled over her a good deal because, as far as he could see, she hadn't the ordinary rules belonging to good people--about church, and not playing cards for money, and pulling people up. It wasn't right and wrong she was thinking of most; it was other people's feelings. He tried not to love her like that, because it made it worse. It was like loving God and Peter; it mixed him all up. He couldn't see straight because everything he saw turned into love of her, and being with her seemed like being good; and it wasn't, of course, if he concealed things.