Electra looked at him over a chin superbly lifted. This was evidently surprise, but whether disdainful of him or not he could not tell. At any rate, he felt whimsically miserable under it.
"Osmond works on the farm," she said merely.
Peter inferred some belittling of Osmond, and immediately he was at one with him and market-gardening.
"I belong to the Brotherhood," he said stiffly. "I don't propose to live like a bondholder while other fellows are hoeing. I'm going to work."
Still Electra said nothing. She had meant to stop at her own gate and let Peter leave her, if he would, but she had driven by, and now they were in a pretty reach of pines, with the needles under the horse's feet. The reins lay loosely, and Electra, who seldom did anything without a painstaking consciousness, even forgot her driving, and let her hands relax into an unlawful ease. They might almost tremble, she was afraid, she felt so undone with some emotion,—disappointment, anger? She did not know. But she kept her eyes fixed on a spot directly ahead, and in spite of herself thought turbulently. She could not help feeling that Peter would be surprised if he knew how he seemed to her after this return, almost a stranger, and one who awoke in her no desire for further acquaintance. He was not ministering to her pride in any way. He was not in the least a person whom she could flaunt at gatherings of the intellectually worshipful, with any chance of his doing her credit. She herself had tried to talk art with him, and Peter grew dumb. She could not guess it was because she did not speak his language, which had become almost a sign language, touched here and there with idiom and the rest understood,—a jargon of technicalities, mostly, it seemed, humorous, he appeared to mean them so lightly. Before he went abroad, she, who had read exhaustively in art, used to impart fact and theory to him in a serious fashion, and Peter had humbly accepted them. But now, when she opened her lips about his darling work which was so intimate a part of him that it was almost like play, he had a queer horror of what she was saying, as if she were beginning a persistent solo on a barbarous instrument; he could think of nothing but putting his hands over his ears and running off. But instead he had only been silent. She could not understand Peter's having read so few books and being in possession of such a meagre treasury of formulated opinion. The truth was that he had so many pleasant things to think about that books were only the dullard's task. His thoughts were not very consecutive or toward any particular end; they were merely a pageant of dancing figures, sometimes fantastic, sometimes dramatically grave, but always absorbing. This Electra could not know. Now it was running through her mind that Peter, though he had won the great prizes of art, was mysteriously dull and not what she considered a distinguished figure at all. His air, his clothes even—she found herself shrinking a little, at the moment, from the slovenly figure he made, his long legs drawn up in the carriage so that he could clasp his hands about his knees, while he went brightly on. For now Peter had found something to talk about. His topic shone before him as he handled it. This was almost like painting a picture with a real brush on real canvas, it grew so fast.
"We might found a community," he was urging as warmly, she thought, as if he meant it. "Osmond can dig. I can. I wonder if you could milk the cow!"
"I have certainly never tried to milk a cow," said Electra, in a tone that bit.
But Peter wasn't listening. He was simply pleasing his own creative self.
"You shouldn't," he offered generously. "You should
'Sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And live on ripe strawberries, sugar, and cream.'"