"Anyway, we can be quite happy for a fortnight, can't we?" Winn raised his head and looked at her. It was his turn to be surprised. "Maurice and I," she explained, "have to go back in two weeks; we've come over here for the fortnight. So we'll just be happy, won't we? And we can settle what we'll do afterward, at the end of the time." She spoke as if a fortnight was a long time. Then Winn kissed her; he did it with extraordinary gentleness, on the side of her cheek and on her wet curls covered with snow. "You're such a baby," he said half to himself; "so it isn't a bit of use your being as old as the hills the other part of the time. There are just about a million reasons why you shouldn't stay, you know." "Oh, reasons!" said Claire, making a face at anything so trivial as a reason. Then she became very grave, and said, "I _want_ to stay, Winn; of course I know what you mean. But there's Maurice; it isn't as if I were alone. And afterwards--oh, Winn, it's because I don't know what is going to happen afterwards--I _must_ have now!" Winn thought for a moment, then he said: "Well, I'll try and work it. You mustn't be in the same hotel, though. Fortunately, I know a nice woman who'll help us through; only, darling, I'm awfully afraid it's beastly wrong for you. I mean I can't explain properly; but if I let you go now, it would be pretty sickening. But you'd get away; and if you stay, I'll do the best I can but we shall get mixed up so that you'll find it harder to shake me off. You see, you're awfully young; there are chances ahead of you, awfully decent other chaps, marriage--" "And you," she whispered--"you?" "Oh, it doesn't matter a damn about me either way," he explained carefully. "I'm stuck. But it isn't really fair of me to let you stay. You don't understand, but it simply isn't fair." Claire looked reproachfully at him. "If I don't want you to be fair," she said, "you oughtn't to want to be--not more than I do, I mean. Besides--Oh, Winn, I do know about when I go! That's why I _can't_ go till we've been happy, awfully happy, _first_. Don't you see, if I went now, there'd be nothing to look back on but just your being hurt and my being hurt; and I want happiness! Oh, Winn, I want happiness!" That was the end of it. He took her in his arms and promised her happiness. PART III CHAPTER XXIII It seemed incredible that they should be happy, but from the first of their fortnight to the last they were increasingly, insanely happy. Everything ministered to their joy; the unstinted blue and gold of the skies, the incommunicable glee of mountain heights, their blind and eager love. There was no future. They were on an island cut off from all to-morrows; but they were together, and their island held the fruits of the Hesperides.