"Of course I understood," Claire went on; "you had to be with poor Mr. Bouncing. It was just like you to stay with him." She had said a good deal, considering that Mr. Ponsonby and Lionel were there. Still, Winn did not misunderstand her. Of course she meant nothing.
"Well," he said, holding out his hand, "I'm extremely glad, Miss Rivers, to have run across you like this, because I'm off this afternoon to St. Moritz. I want to have a look at the Cresta."
"Oh," she cried a little breathlessly, "you're not going away, are you? But you'll come back again, of course?"
"I hope so, I'm sure, some day or other," said Winn. Then he turned to Ponsonby. "Have you been down the Cresta?" he asked.
"Not from Church Leap," he replied. "I've got too much respect for my bones. It's awfully tricky; I've gone down from below it. You don't get such a speed on then."
"Oh, Major Staines, you won't toboggan?" Claire cried out. "You know you mustn't toboggan! Dr. Gurnet said you mustn't. You won't, will you? Captain Drummond, aren't you going with him to stop him?"
"He isn't a very easy person to stop," he answered her. "I'll join him later on, of course; but I want to see a little more of Davos before I go."
"There isn't the slightest danger," Winn remarked, without meeting Claire's eyes. "The Cresta's as safe as a church hassock. There isn't half the skill in tobogganing that there is in skating. Good-by, Miss Rivers. I never enjoyed anything as much as I enjoyed our skating competition. I'm most grateful to you for putting up with me."
Claire gave him her hand then, but Winn remembered afterward that she never said good-by. She looked at him as if he had done something which was not fair.
Winn's chief objection to St. Moritz was the shabby way in which it imitated Davos. It had all the same materials--endless snows, forests of fir-trees, soaring peaks and the serene blueness of the skies--and yet as Davos it didn't in the least come off. It was more beautiful and less definite; the peaks were nearer and higher; they streamed out around the valley like an army with banners. The long, low lake and the small, perched villages, grossly overtopped by vulgar hotel palaces, had a far more fugitive air.