"I must meet her at once; but I cannot go out to-morrow. Will you bring her to me at Arlington Street?"
Peter at this was entirely happy. How could he have doubted that his precious intimacy with Lady Mary would be broken. Talking thus of his mother, she invited him to come closer yet. Peter wondered if Wenderby had ever seen her tears. She passed through her hands a string of pearls that hung about her neck, and Peter saw in them the frozen symbol of drops more precious. His eyes, as this conceit came into his mind, rested upon the stones as they fell through her fingers. He did not know he was looking at the hand he had kissed. Lady Mary drew it behind her fan.
"You like my pearls?" she said abruptly.
Peter started a little.
"They are very beautiful, but you do not need them," he said bluntly.
The crudity of his compliment was more effective than the most artful flattery. Wenderby looked wistfully at the two young faces, conscious that between them youth was singing. Peter's adoration was plainly written, and Lady Mary received it with a delicate flush of colour and a perceptible nervousness. Wenderby had never before seen her in the least perturbed.
He hastily turned the conversation, commenting on the ballet they had just seen—a ballet of lust and blood. It had stepped from the pages of Sir Richard Burton, barbaric in colour and music—frankly sadistic.
"This," he said, indicating the rows of brilliant and respectable people who had watched it, "is a feast indeed for the cynical. How many of these people realise what they have seen? How horrified they would be if you told them in plain English what they have just heard in plain music!"
"You are a musician?" Peter asked politely.
"Enough of a musician to know that even Sir Richard Burton never spoke plainer than this Russian fellow. It seems to me quite extraordinary that civilised people are able to sit serenely beside one another in a public place and hear things which they would blush to read in a private room."