Nellie hesitated: she had never yet realized how close to love had been her intimacy with Peter, or how far from love her own marriage-bond. And now, when, bitterly resenting what Silvia had done, he turned to her....
Peter, in her silence, repeated his question.
“A brute?” he asked, and now his voice shook.
She took her hand briskly off his shoulder. They had stood there like that, comrades and friends, for ten minutes now, and her fingers had dwelt on his shoulder, the bone and the muscle of it.
“Not a brute at all,” she said. “You couldn’t be a brute, you darling. But a liar and a cheat.”
He walked round the room after this, with a whistle for her and him, and a kick for a footstool that got in his way.
“You don’t help me,” he said. “What’s to be done?”
Somehow, at his absence of resentment at what she had said, and at his appeal to her for help, the old delightful level of comradeship smoothed itself out.
“Tell her that you know,” suggested Nellie. “Do it nicely.”