... The bandsmen are dimly visible, packing away their mute instruments. A voice from the long-ago is calling faintly “Peter” ... hastily she covers the sound: “What are you? A stockbroker?”
“No,” he too has heard, and speaks rather breathlessly; “do I make love like a stockbroker?”
“You haven’t.”
“I have, in my own subtle fashion. But I can’t overleap the first stages in this Post-impressionist preliminary scamper of ours.”
... “Pet-er! Pe-ter!” clearer now—and nearer.
“A stockbroker has but seven stages of love-making, and by these shall ye know him,” laughs Peter.
“And I have a hundred and seven, and seven more after that, and by none of these shall ye know me.”
“Do you always talk about yourself?”
“No,” desperately; “I can talk about ever so many things: Cathedrals, and good form, and machinery, and how to make pins. Oh, and metaphysics. Particularly metaphysics. I took a double first at Oxford. I’ve no right to tell you, but I want you to know,” with the first touch of boyishness that has as yet escaped the hard polished surface of his manner.
... “I can’t think where she is,” Merle replies courteously, two rooms off.