XLIII
Vivette did not without regret see Peter go. But she had seen enough to realise that his adventures were at an end. She surrendered him to a better claim, as always she had decided to do. Her comedy, she told herself, had on the whole finished happily. Vivette had the fortunate ability to be done for ever with things ended. She was too thoroughly a player to wish the curtain raised upon a story technically finished.
Peter, too, had rung down the veil on his pilgrimage. He wanted to take up his life from the moment at which he had looked for Miranda in an empty house. It all came vividly to his mind again. The short ride home was thronged with scenes from his life of a boy. They rose from the stirred pools of memory. He could see pale clusters of the evening primrose, and smell the laden air of a place where he had waited for her long ago. He saw a heap of discoloured paper dimly lit by a struck match, lying in a far corner of a raftered room where he had lost her.
How could this girl have become a stranger? It was impossible. Yet it was also impossible that he for five years had neglected to look for her. He had not remembered her for five years. He could not now believe it. The five years confronted him, inexorably accusing.
He reached Curzon Street, and at once looked for his mother. She could tell him all there was to know of Miranda, and in the morning he would go to her. His mother came from her room as Peter arrived on the stairs.
"You are tired, mother. You want to sleep?"
"We will talk in the morning, Peter."
"Not to-night?"
"It is not necessary to-night."
Mrs. Paragon smiled mysteriously, and added: