Joan, after an interval, decided to be frank.
“It’s not much good, Billy, is it, if I do?”
Wilmington said nothing for quite a long time. He sat thinking hard. “It’s not much good pretending I don’t hate Peter. I do. If I could kill him—and in your memory too.... He bars you from me. He makes you unhappy....”
His face was a white misery. Joan glanced round at the tables about her, but no one seemed to be watching them. She looked at him again. Pity, so great that it came near to love, wrung her....
“Joan,” he said at last.
“Yes?”
“It’s queer.... I feel mean.... As though it wasn’t right.... But look here, Joan.” He tapped her arm. “Something—something that I suppose I may as well point out to you. Because in certain matters—in certain matters you are being a fool. It’s astonishing—— But absolutely—a fool.”
Joan perceived he had something very important to say. She sat watching him, as with immense deliberation he got out another cigarette and lit it.
“You don’t understand this Peter business, Joan. I—I do. Mostly when I’m not actually planning out or carrying out the destruction of Germans, I think of you—and Peter. And all the rest of it. I’ve got nothing else much to think about. And I think I see things you don’t see. I know I do.... Oh damn it! Go to hell!”
This last was to the waiter, who was making the customary warning about liqueurs on the stroke of half-past nine.