He mounted the boy on to his shoulder and turned round to Miss Rossiter to say “Good-bye.” The photograph lay on the table between them—“I shan't forget that,” he said.
“Oh! but you must come and see us one day. My mother will be delighted. There are a lot more photographs at home. You must bring him out one day, Norah,” she said turning to Miss Monogue.
If he had been a primitive member of society in the Stone Age he would at this point, have placed Robin carefully on the floor and have picked Miss Rossiter up and she should never again have left his care.
As it was he said, “I shall be delighted to come one day.”
“We will talk about Cornwall—”
“And Germany.”
His hand was burning hot when he gave it her—he knew that she was looking at his eyes.
He was abruptly conscious of Miss Monogue's voice behind him.
“I've read a quarter of the book, Peter.”
He wondered as he turned to her how it could be possible to regard two women so differently. To be so sternly critical of one—her hair that was nearly down, a little ink on her thumb, her blouse that was unbuttoned—and of the other to see her all in a glory so that her whole body, for colour and light and beautiful silence, had no equal amongst the possessions of the earth or the wonders of heaven. Here there was a button undone, there there was a flaming fire.