Nellie blew reproach at him in the shape of a ragged smoke-ring.
“I never heard anything so unjust,” she said. “Oh, Peter, it was just here we sat when I told you I was going to be quite conventional. Wasn’t it? Don’t say you don’t remember. Well, I’m being the model of conventionality.”
“Pleasant, is it?” asked Peter, in a wonderfully neutral voice. He did not yet quite know why Nellie had summoned him here, and he was greatly aloof still.
“Don’t make slightly acid comments,” said she, “about conventionality. It’s a fortnight, more than a fortnight, since I saw you last. Oh, I don’t count balls and that sort of thing. Your friends are invisible at balls. You can only see your acquaintances. What’s the use of just seeing a friend? You’ve got to be alone with a friend in order to see him.”
Nellie was still unaware of what course she was really meaning to steer. It was to be a safe course, anyhow, avoiding shoals and avoiding icebergs. Just at present Peter was making himself an iceberg. She went on, talking rapidly and quite naturally, with a view to bringing Peter out of his frozen aloofness.
“But my scheme for conventionality never went so far as to exclude my seeing my friends altogether,” she said. “And if, in order to see a particular friend, I have to tell lies to one person and—and tell the other not to leave his coat in the hall, that’s not my fault. It’s mother’s fault for not having gone to bed yet; it’s Philip’s fault for proposing to drop in.”
Peter’s smile hovered over his face again, not quite breaking through.
“Brutes,” he said. “Perfect brutes.”
“I’m not sure that you aren’t the worst of them all,” remarked Nellie.
His smile broke through at that, and he laughed.