Petra dropped her grass bracelet—half made—into the grass and picked up the hem of her skirt, folding it back. “Look,” she said, “how beautifully finished it is.”
The flight of bees had been carried on, in all its careful perfection, to the upper edge of the hem on its inner side, where it would never show. It was as if the embroiderer had loved her work too well to realize when she had done enough.
“Clare’s dress was nothing at all,” Petra was saying. “It didn’t matter what little Sophia did to it. Besides, if Clare ruined a dozen dresses, it wouldn’t matter. She could buy dozens more.... So it wasn’t fair, was it?”
“No. It was hardly fair,” Lewis agreed absently.
Petra jumped up. The bee-embroidered hem of her skirt brushed through the flowers in the deep grass. She came closer to Lewis, stood there before him in the long grass.
“Could you spare me a cigarette?” she asked.
She had not smoked at the tea table and Lewis had taken it for granted she was that rare thing, a modern girl who did not smoke. Apologetically, he offered her his opened cigarette case and struck a match for her on the piazza boards. (The grateful patient should have given Lewis a lighter along with the case!) But he might as well have kissed her as have held the light for her,—with his face like that. Even before the girl saw Lewis’ face, she felt what was there for her to see. Her eyelids swept up, to verify her suddenly alert instinct, and for just that instant blue reticence, under Lewis’ own startled eyes, leapt into blue flame.... Petra drew a little away, trying to smile and utterly failing. Lewis lighted a fresh cigarette for himself.
Petra puffed at hers for a minute only and then it went the way the bracelet had gone, only she bent to press out the spark—firmly, securely—into damp grass roots. Returning to her place, she clasped her hands around her knees again and explained.
“Really I don’t know how to smoke, not gracefully. You shouldn’t have watched me! You made me feel hypocritical, watching me like that. But I do smoke, sometimes. Almost every night. One or two cigarettes after dinner with Father. So I wasn’t pretending, you see....”
She went on, after a minute, “You asked me about Teresa, remember? I’ll tell you now. I couldn’t say a word with Clare listening. But Clare lied about her. She knows perfectly well that Teresa wasn’t our maid—not in the sense that that Fairfax person was Clare’s butler, I mean. Teresa was nothing in the world but our guardian angel,—father’s, Marian’s, and mine. And she is my best friend.”