Peter was silent for a little while. Then compunction betrayed itself in his voice.
“It’s you I’m thinking of, Joan. I can’t bear to see you make yourself cheap.”
“Cheap! And you?”
“I’m different. I’m altogether different. A man is.”
Silence for a time. Joan seemed to push back her hair, and so smeared the tears from her face.
“We interfere with each other,” she said at last. “We interfere with each other. What is the good of it? You’ve got to go your way and I’ve got to go mine. We used to have fun—lots of fun. Now....”
She couldn’t say any more for a while.
“I’m going my own way, Peter. It’s a different way——Leave me alone. Keep off!”
They said no more. When they got in they found Miss Jepson sitting by the fire, and she had got them some cocoa and biscuits. The headache that had kept her from the Sheldrick festival had lifted, and Joan plunged at once into a gay account of the various people she had seen that evening—saving and excepting Gavan Huntley. But Peter stood by the fireplace, silent, looking down into the fire, sulking or grieving. All the while that Joan rattled on to Miss Jepson she was watching him with almost imperceptible glances and wondering whether he sulked or grieved. Did he feel as she felt? If he sulked—well, confound him! But what if this perplexing dissension hurt him as much as it was hurting her!