Peter at dinner was next Vivette, and Atterbury, with Miranda, was at the far end of a long table. He heard only snatches of their talk, enough to show that Miranda entirely outmatched him in conversation and address. She was complete mistress of herself. She had put away all sense of crisis, ignoring the tumult of her late encounter. Atterbury loved all things French, and Peter had many opportunities to notice their enthusiastic agreement.

Peter could not so well recover. Miranda\'s return had blotted out the last five years. He saw no change in her. She was the woman he had always divined her to be. He had never seen in her the awkward girl whose disappearance Mrs. Paragon had noted. Her refusal to accept him at once and take up their life from the point at which they had parted became increasingly absurd as in numberless gestures, in the play of her spirit made visible, he recognised ever more clearly the girl he had lost. His wonder grew, equally, at the way in which for five years he had ignored her existence. These years now seemed unreal. Surely he had loved her always, and always had been full of her.

If only he called to her in the old familiar way, surely she would no longer play the stranger. She[Pg 319] would recognise their bond, and all this pageant, holding them absurdly apart, would disappear.

Miranda knew how Peter watched her; how he was living himself back into the past; how he was seeking for a sign that she admitted their union. But she would not yet confess that between them a secret current ran even as she talked and laughed and accepted Atterbury\'s vivacious gallantry. She had yet to hear from Peter why for five years he had made no sign. He deserved at any rate to be put on his defence.

Peter\'s wonderful last adventure returned upon him in waves of uphappy consciousness, to be decently put away in heroic efforts to entertain his guests, and be the companion of Vivette. But it was always with a start of the mind that he returned to his duties.

Vivette was deeply offended. Peter was again on fire. She had seen him leap into flame at the sight of a stranger. She had not expected her warning to Peter to be so quickly justified. His behaviour to-night, to put it no higher, was a breach of manners. She had taken Peter very seriously, and he now was doing his best to show she had been mistaken. Her face visibly burned when she remembered how intimately she had abased herself. He had touched a deeper vein in her than she had known, but now he was turning her late act to ridicule.

She talked to him only in answers, and several times he found her distastefully watching the [Pg 320]absorbed trend of his attention towards Miranda. Peter was now wholly wretched. Between himself and Miranda a gulf was fixed, and Vivette\'s hostility aggravated his misery.

At last Vivette and Peter were isolated from the conversation. Their neighbours were each talking on the other side. Peter felt the strain was becoming intolerable. He had turned from watching Miranda to Vivette, and her contemptuous amusement whipped him to a defence.

"This is not what it seems," he said in a low voice.

"Perfection at last," Vivette contemptuously suggested.

"I have known her for years," he pleaded, glancing towards Miranda.

"Really I can\'t listen. Let us at least bury our own affair."

"I am speaking the literal truth."

Vivette was surprised at his vehemence.

"I am not good at riddles," she said, looking at him closely.

"You don\'t know what has happened."

"I know," Vivette retorted in a voice that cut him, "that you have had the discourtesy to be smitten with a strange woman within a week of making love to me."

"She is the first woman I ever knew."

Vivette looked closely at Peter.
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