Peter, home after his first important absence, found that his former life had shrunk. He had seen things on a generous scale. Only for four days had he been away, but it was an epoch.

He went immediately to find Miranda, trembling with impatience. But he was struck shy when they met. Peter had imagined this meeting as a perfect renewal of their last moments together. He had seen himself thrilling into a passionate welcome, taking up his life with Miranda where it had abruptly ceased with the arrival of Uncle Henry four days ago. But at sight of her the current of his eagerness was checked. It was that curious moment of lovers who have lived through so many meetings in imagination that the actual moment cannot be fulfilled.

"You\'re back," she said awkwardly, hardly able to look at him.

"I\'ve just this moment come." Peter thought it was the staring daylight that put this constraint upon them. Then he saw in his fancy the welcome he had expected—very different from this—and, as though he were acting something many times rehearsed, he kissed Miranda with an intended joy.

Miranda\'s constraint was now broken.

[Pg 55]

"I have missed you dreadfully," she whispered.

She held him tight, urged by the piteous memory of four empty days; and Peter, rising at her passion, strained her truthfully towards him. The disillusion of meeting fell away from them both.

Soon he was talking to her of Oxford, and the great life he had shared. He did not realise that a strain of arrogant enthusiasm came into his tale—a suggestion that in these last four days he had flapped the wings of his ambition in high air and dazzling sunshine. Miranda was chilled, feeling she had been in the cold, divining that Peter had a little grown away from her in the things he recounted with such unnecessary joy. At last she interrupted him.

"You haven\'t missed me, Peter."

"But I have," answered Peter, passing in a breath to tell of his encounter with the dons of Gamaliel. Miranda put her hand into his, but Peter, graphically intent upon his tale, insensibly removed it for a necessary gesture.

"I don\'t want to hear," said Miranda suddenly.

She slipped from where they sat, and, killing him with her eyes, walked abruptly away.

Peter was struck into dismay. Remorse for his selfish intentness upon glories Miranda had not shared shot him through. But he stayed where she had left him, sullenly resentful. She need not have been so violent. How ugly was her voice when she told him she did not want to hear.[Pg 56] Peter noticed in her swinging dress a patched rent, and her dusty s............