In the coming months Peter met many of the friends of Vivette. He at once became enthusiastic, and insisted to Atterbury that they were much maligned by superior people. Atterbury agreed.

"They\'re the best-hearted people in the world," he said—"quite perfect if you don\'t have to do business with them."

"So genuine," Peter exclaimed.

"Very genuine," Atterbury echoed. "They always mean what they say. Of course they never mean the same thing for two days. But that only makes them more interesting."

He looked, as he said this, hard at Peter, and Peter flushed, knowing how justly he himself might be classed with enthusiastic people who change and range with the time. Why had he suddenly lost interest in the friends of Haversham and Lady Mary? He simply did not want to go on with them. He was caught up in this other set, and at heart he knew that his pleasure in these strangers was a dereliction. Their charm was superficial, their posturing was frequently half-bred. He realised that he was declining, through weariness, to a less excellent carriage of himself. He was unhappy and restless—tired enough to take and enjoy the second best.

Atterbury\'s play lived through the summer and[Pg 287] the autumn season. It outlived many great events—among them a general election which put in the Tories, and the marriage of Lady Mary with Lord Wenderby, then First Lord of the Admiralty.

As Peter stood in St. Margaret\'s watching the ceremony he could hardly believe that he had ever had a part in this great affair. It seemed that lately he had gradually come down to a pleasant valley. It was incredible that he had ever breathed high air with the radiant woman who now was the wife of the most powerful man in England.

Lady Mary\'s marriage made Peter think. Already Vivette was an obsession, serious enough to be noticed by his friends, and to interfere with his work. Peter began to be frightened, and secretly ashamed. His last years seemed all to be bound up with women. Was he never to be free of his foolish sensibility? Was he to fall helplessly from figure to figure as opportunity called him? There was work to do, but his fancy was perpetually caught and held in one monotonous lure.

Lady Mary had shown him there were other ends to follow than a personal and perfect mating. He was beginning to feel haunted. There was a murk in his brain—into which thoughts sometimes intruded which he found, in clear moments, to be shabby. They prompted him intimately towards Vivette. Perhaps it would give him peace if once for all he pricked the bubble of his expectation. Why should he not test this vision; pierce rudely in, and pass on? Sex was not all,[Pg 288] and if here he fell short of perfection, it was no great matter. He could leave that dream behind, no longer urged about it in a weary circle.

He felt at first that this impulse towards weak submission was treason to a secret part of himself that seemed to be waiting, seemed also to know that perfection would come and must find him virginal. But this feeling was less strong with the passing time. He came more and more to cherish the idea of Vivette. Her changing eyes became his only mirror wherein to look for an answer to his question, and when he did not find the answer he began stormily to wonder whether their cryptic shallows might not surrender the secret he desired if adventurously he dived deep enough.

This mood always found and left him deeply out of heart. It was part of a general feeling that he was gradually breaking down. Sometimes, in defence, it flung him to an extreme of carefully induced exaltation. When temptation whispered that Vivette was a pleasant creature, and would allow his love, he insisted, to justify his impulse to take her, that surely she must perfectly be his mate. His unconquerable idealism, weakened and gradually beaten down, required that he should thus deceive himself.

Through the winter—Atterbury\'s play still lingered—they frequently spent Sunday evening together in her Soho flat. Vivette alternated between fits of extreme physical energy—when she[Pg 289] took exercise in every discovered way—and complete inertia. Midwinter found her at the close of her hibernating—"lying fallow for the spring," she described it. She passed her Sundays curled up in a deep settee by the fire. Peter spent long, drowsy afternoons and evenings reading with her, dropping occasional words, eating light food prepared by a cook who understood that her mistress must on no account be served with anything which required her to sit upright. Peter, who earlier in the year had ridden, rowed, and played tennis with Vivette, did not in the least like her present habits.

Upon a Sunday evening in February he discontentedly began to wait on her at supper.

"Dormouse," he called from the table, "what are you going to drink?"

To his surprise Vivette suddenly sat up:

"Champagne to-night. I\'m going to be full of beans. I shall do Swedish drill in the morning."

"Not a day too soon," grumbled Peter. "I wonder you can stand it, eating butter and cream all day and lying on your back. You must have the liver of a horse."

"You are right," she retorted. "People pretend to despise me for being lazy. It\'s envy, Peter. Everybody would be lazy in the winter if their health would stand it."

She pushed away a plate of delicate soufflé.

"Not to-night, Peter. I\'m going to eat some meat."

[Pg 290]

"I often wonder about you," said Peter.

"Really?"

"Do you do nothing with your whole heart, or everything?"

"Everything," said Vivette, with her mouth full.

"I don\'t believe anything really touches you."

Peter was trying to be serious.

"You are forgetting the champagne," she interrupted.

Peter went to the cupboard, brought out a bottle and exploded it.

"Thank you, Peter. There\'s nothing in the world like the pop of a champagne cork. It makes me think."

"Think?" said Peter, with his nose in the air.

"Yes," she insisted. "It makes me think how nothing matters at all, or how everything matters tremendously. I don\'t know which."

"I hate champagne," said Peter viciously.

"Of course."

"Why \'of course\'?"

"There\'s something which doesn\'t fit in your popping a champagne cork. It\'s like laughing in church."

"Champagne is vulgar. It\'s only good for a bean-feast."

"You\'re going to have some, I suppose?" She looked at him in a way that spoke between the lines of her question.

Peter hated the challenge of her light inquiry.[Pg 291] He wanted to deepen it. In many small ways Vivette had held herself out to Peter, but she did not seem to care what he would do.

He poured himself some wine and drank to her.

"This is excellent champagne," he said brightly. Then he drooped. "It isn\'t my stuff," he added.

"I love it. Pop—and it\'s all over."

"It goes flat in the glass."

"Just for a moment it\'s perfect."

"The present, I suppose, is all that matters?" said Peter, heavily censorious.

"Why not?" she slanted her amusement at Peter, and delicately crushed the bubbles of her wine.

"Have you ever taken anything seriously in your life?" asked Peter.

"I have never inquired."

Her eyes flickered. Their wavering light exasperated his desire to move her deeply, to hold for a moment her nimble spirit that ran at a touch like quicksilver. She felt his rising passion, and he............