Peter nodded, his mind still with Osmond, but cheering a little in the consciousness of her graceful presence.
"Peter!" She stopped, and laid a finger on his sleeve. "Say something to her! She is going over there to work, to throw herself into that movement. She might as well jump into the Seine."
"Yes," said Peter musingly. "Yes, of course! I'll go see her. I'll go at once."
She assented eagerly. She seemed to hurry him away, and not knowing quite what he was to do when he got there, he found himself, obedient but unprepared, at the other house, before Electra. She was agreeably welcoming. Peter had ceased even to remind her of young love, chiefly because it was a part of her dignity to put the incomplete dream aside. When she was forced to remember, sometimes by a word of grandmother's, it gave her an irritated sense of having once been cheek to cheek with something unworthy of her. But this morning Peter meant nothing whatever. A larger bulk had blotted him out. He plunged, at once.
"I am going to Paris, too, Electra. We shall meet there."
She smiled at him with a fine remoteness.
"Perhaps," she said. Then a wave of her old distaste came over her, and she asked, with the indifference that veils forbidden feeling,—
"Are you going together?"
"Together?"
"Yes. Are you going with Rose MacLeod?"