"Yes," said Winn; "he's dead. I'm looking for some coffee. These confounded, tow-headed Swiss mules never get up at any decent hour. Why are you still dressed? Nothing wrong, is there?" "Well, I didn't feel particularly sleepy, somehow," Lionel acknowledged. "Are you going to stand outside in this moth-eaten passage the rest of the night, or will you come in with me and have a whisky and soda? You must be fagged out." "I don't mind if I do," Winn agreed. "We may as well make a night of it." For a few minutes neither of them spoke, then Winn said: "Had a jolly dance?" Lionel did not answer him directly; but he turned round, and met his friend's eyes with his usual unswerving honesty. "Look here, old Winn," he said, "it's up to you to decide now. I'll stay on here or go with you, whichever you like." "You like her, then?" Winn asked quickly. "Yes," said Lionel, "I like her." "Well, then, you'll stay of course," said Winn without any hesitation. "Isn't that what we damned well settled?" Lionel's eyes had changed. They were full of a new light; he looked as if some one had lit a lantern within him. Love had come to him not as it had come to Winn, bitterly, unavailingly, without illusion; it had fallen upon his free heart and lit it from end to end with joy. He loved as a man loves whose heart is clean and who has never loved before, without a scruple and without restraint. Love had made no claims on him yet; it had not offered him either its disappointments or its great rewards. He was transformed without being altered. He simply saw everything as glorious which before had been plain, but he did not see different things. "Yes," he said, "I know we talked about it; but I'm hanged if I'll try unless I'm sure you are absolutely keen. I thought it all out after--after I'd seen her, and it seemed to me all very well in the abstract giving her up to another man and all that, but when it came to the point, would you be really sure to want me to carry through? I've seen her now, you know, and I'm glad I've seen her. I'll be glad always for that, but it needn't go any further." Winn looked past him; he was tired with the long night's strain, and he had no white ideal to be a rapture in his heart. He loved Claire not because she was perfection, but because she was herself. She was faultless to Lionel, but Winn didn't care whether she was faultless or not. He didn't expect perfection or even want it, and he wasn't the man to be satisfied with an ideal; but he wanted, as few men have ever wanted for any women, that Claire should be happy and safe.