Nellie’s eyes suddenly grew fixed and rapt.
“Oh, Peter, one moment!” she whispered. “Look quickly at mamma’s face. When that holy expression comes on it, it always means that she is intending to declare no trumps. So when I’m playing against her, if it’s my turn first I always declare one no trumps, and then she has to declare two. Wait one second, Peter.”
“No trumps,” said Mrs. Heaton.
“There, I told you so!” said Nellie. “Yes; it is rather long to wait, though I don’t mean to say that a hundred and fifty isn’t a very pleasant age, dear. The people in Genesis usually lived five hundred years before they married, and begat sons and daughters. Anyhow, I shall be a widow before you’re a hundred and fifty, and then we shall be engaged for three hundred and fifty years more, and then we shall totter to the altar. I can’t help talking drivel; it’s all too serious to take seriously. By the way, I shall be richer than you eventually, for when mamma dies I shall have two thousand a year, but that won’t be for two thousand years. We have been born too soon, Peter!”
Peter thought this not worth answering, but lifting one of his knees, nursed it between his clasped hands in silence. For her loose honey-coloured hair, he had a crisp coal-blackness; he was tall for her small slim stature, and his lips were set to definite purposes, whereas hers were malleable to adapt themselves to any emotion that might waywardly blow on her. But both, in compensation for differences that were complementary, were triumphantly alike in the complete soullessness of their magnificent youth; without violation of any internal principle they might, either of them, shoot up singing with the lark, or pad and prowl with the ruthless hunger of the tiger, or burrow with the mole. They were Satyr and Hamadryad, some ancient and eternally young embodiment of life, with whim to take the place of conscience, and the irresponsible desire of wild things to do duty for duty, and impulse to take the place of reason. Each, too, had developed to an almost alarming degree that modern passion for introspection, which is an end in itself, and like a barren tree, yields no fruit in the ways of action or renunciation.
Peter hugged his knee, and his eye grew hazy and unfocused in meditation.
“Am I in love with you, do you think?” he asked at length.
She laughed, quite disregarding the ears of the bridge players. With Peter she was more herself than with anyone else, or even than when alone.
“Oh, that’s so like you,” she said, “and so wonderfully like me. Certainly you’re not in love with me; you’re not in love with anybody. You never have been; you never will be. You’re fonder of me than of anybody else, but that’s a very different thing.”
“But how do you know I’m not in love with you?” he asked. “I may be. You’re not so unattractive. Why shouldn’t I be in love with you?”