“You may be quite sure I’m not a brute,” he said. “But I should like to know why you think so.”
Nellie was sincere enough in her desire to re-establish a genuine, friendly relationship with him again. At present their grip on each other was clogged and rusted. If this rather unconventional meeting was to be of any use (what use she did not clearly define), the first essential was to wipe the wheels clean.
“You know perfectly well,” she said. “Ever since my engagement you have taken yourself completely away. You have shut yourself up. You have bolted your windows and barred your doors to me. Haven’t you?”
Peter weighed this accusation. It might possibly be true; but it contained an arguable point, which was easy to state.
“I never bolted the windows and barred the doors,” he said. “It was you who did that. I didn’t arrange that you should marry Philip. That’s what shut me up, if you choose to put it like that. I told you at the time that our relations must be changed.”
She shook her head.
“No relations that ever existed between us need have been changed,” she said. “You speak as if we had been in love with each other.”
“Not at all. We never were in love with each other; that we both know. But——”
“What then?” she asked.
“I’ll take your simile,” he said. “My windows and doors were open to you. I might easily have fallen in love with you, or, for that matter, you with me. Our relationship, and the possibilities it held, were just those of open doors and windows. Then you came round and shut me up. And Philip drew the curtains.”