“There’s people who scent themselves to make love,” said Peter.
“Experienced Petah,” said Joan.
“I’ve read of it,” said Peter, and a little pause fell between them....
“Every one ought to be like us,” said Joan sagely, with the spring sunshine on her dear face.
“It takes all sorts to make a world,” said Peter.
“Everybody ought to have a lover,” said Joan. “Everybody. There’s no clean life without it.”...
“We’ve been through some beastly times, Joan. We’ve run some beastly risks.... We’ve just scrambled through, Joan, to love—as I scrambled through to life. After being put down and shot at.”...
Presently Joan suspected a drag in Peter’s paces and decided at the sight of a fallen tree in a little grass lane to profess fatigue. They sat down upon the scaly trunk, just opposite to where a gate pierced a budding hedge and gave a view of a long, curved ridge of sunlit blue, shooting corn with red budding and green-powdered trees beyond, and far away a woldy upland rising out of an intervening hidden valley. And Peter admitted that he, too, felt a little tired. But each was making a pretence for the sake of the other.
“We’ve rediscovered a lot of the old things, Joan,” said Peter. “The war has knocked sense into us. There wasn’t anything to work for, there wasn’t much to be loyal to in the days of the Marconi scandals and the Coronation Durbar. Slack times, more despair in them by far than in these red days. Rotten, aimless times.... Oh! the world’s not done for....
“I don’t grudge my wrist or my leg,” said Peter. “I can hop. I’ve still got five and forty years, fifty years, perhaps, to spend. In this new world.”...