Probably he meant to say something horrible about India; she had been expecting it for some time. The report on Tibet was finished, and he could let his staff work go when he liked.
He stood at the foot of her couch and looked at her curiously. Estelle could feel his eyes on her; she wondered if he noticed how thin she was, and how transparent her eyelids were. Every fiber in her body was aware of her desire to impress him with her frailty. She held it before him like a banner.
"Estelle," he said. When he spoke she winced.
"Yes, dear," she murmured hardly above a whisper.
"Would you mind opening your eyes?" he suggested. "I've got something I want to talk over with you, and I really can't talk to a door banged in my face."
"I'm so sorry," she said meekly; "I'm afraid I'm almost too exhausted to talk, but I'll try to listen to what you have to say."
"Thanks," said Winn. He paused as if, after all, it wasn't easy to begin, even in the face of this responsiveness. She thought he looked rather odd. His eyes had a queer, dazed look, as if he had been drinking heavily or as if somebody had kicked him.
"Well," she asked at last, "what is it you want to talk about? Suspense of any kind, you know, is very bad for my heart."
"I beg your pardon," he said. "It was only that I thought I'd better mention I am going to Davos."
"Davos!" She opened her eyes wide now and stared at him. "That snow place?" she asked, "full of consumptives? What a curious idea! I never have been able to understand how people can care to go there for sport. It seems to me rather cruel; but, then, I know I am specially sensitive about that kind of thing. Other people's pain weighs so on me."
"I didn't say I was going there for sport," Winn answered in the same peculiar manner. He sat down and began to play with a paper-cutter on his knee. "As a matter of fact, I'm not," he went on. "I've crocked one of my lungs. They seem to think I've got to go. It's a great nuisance."
It was curious the way he kept looking at her, as if he expected something. He couldn't have told exactly what he expected himself. He was face to face with a new situation; he wasn't exactly frightened, but he had a feeling that he would like very much to know how he ought to meet it. He had often been close to death--but he had never somehow thought of dying, he wasn't close to death now but at the end of something which might be very horrible there would be the long affair of dying. He hoped he would get through it all right and not make a fuss or be a bother to anybody. It had all come with a curious suddenness. He had gone to Travers one day because when Polly pulled he had an odd pain in his chest. He had had a toss the week before, and it had occurred to him that a rib might be broken; but Travers said it wasn't that.