A taxi hailed, and directions given. And whereas Merle, in the whirl through the lit crowded streets, grieved for the laughter missed, Peter was reproaching herself for an inexplicable wish to be doing all this alone; alone to be meeting Stuart at seven o’clock. She had not seen him since that night on the moors; he had slipped away the next morning before his companions were out of bed.
Her excitement grew. Merle looked at her, once, by the flashing arc of a street-lamp—then glanced quickly away again.
Outward circumstances were well in favour of a successful trio party. Memory of dark green moor and sun-splashed waves and all the details that went to make Carn Trewoofa,—and at the doors of the Billet-doux behold now Stuart in evening-clothes and silk hat and a man-about-town set to his eyeglass: “So glad you could come,” in the Oxford voice,—had he ever really shown them his bare grazed knees?
“We do look pirates,” exclaimed Peter, laughingly conscious of brown throat, and hair tangled to a web by the salt winds. And indeed, many heads were turned to gaze after the two girls in stained tweed skirts, jerseys and caps, threading their defiant way between the tables, in the wake of the exquisite dandy.
“The same places as at our first supper?” suggested Stuart.
They assented.
So the mirror reflected the three figures, as once before. And Merle thought hard of Da Vinci’s masterpiece. She would have liked to ask if Peter were visited by the same idea, but remembered in time that the thread of intimacy had been snapped. Easy enough, now that her eyes were opened, to see what had happened to the two grown-ups, for thus she contemptuously classified her comrades; and she imagined their secret evident in every look and word; their lightest remark tingling with electricity.
... Just this once she would still be faithful to the spirit of trio. But oh, how she longed to let them know that all this elaborate comedy of maintaining for her benefit a volley of nonsense talk, was merely insulting; her eyes were clear of dust.
“Do, for pity’s sake, tell me some tales of Orson Manor, for the edification of grandmaman.”
“What’s the good?” from Peter; “you know that the very first time I come to lunch, I shall put my hoof in it up to the hilt.”