“Peter, Peter Kennedy, you are not to be sour nor gloomy, you are to be happy too, to rejoice with me. You say you love me.” He drew a long breath.
“You will never know how much.”
“Then be glad with me. My health has revived, my youth has come back, my wasted devastated youth. I am a girl again with this added glory of womanhood. Am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you, I only want you to understand, I can speak freely, for you always knew I was not for you. Would you like me to be uncertain, delicate, despondent? Surely not.”
“I want you to be happy,” he said unevenly.
“Add to it a little.” She held out her hand to him. “Stay and have tea with me. Afterwards we will go up to the music room, I will give you a last lesson. Have you been practising? Peter, are you glad or sorry that we ever met? I don’t think I have harmed you. You admit I roused your ambition, and surely your music has improved, not only in execution, but your musical taste. Do you remember the first time you played and sang to me? ‘Put Me Among the Girls!’ was the name of the masterpiece you rolled out. I put my fingers to my ears, but afterwards you played without singing, and you listened to me without fidgeting. Peter, you won’t play ‘Put Me Among the Girls’ this afternoon, will you? What will you play to me when tea is over and we go upstairs?”
Peter Kennedy, with that strange uneasiness or lambent agony in his eyes, eyes that all the time avoided hers, answered:
“I shall play you Beethoven’s ‘Adieu.’”
“Poor Peter!” she said softly.
She thought he was unhappy because he loved and was losing her, because she was going to be married next week and could not disguise that the crown of life was coming to her. She was very sweet to him all that afternoon, and sorry for him, fed him with little cress sandwiches and pretty speeches, spoke to him of his talents and pressed him to practise assiduously, make himself master of the classical musicians. She really thought she was elevating him and was conscious of how well she talked.
“Then as to your profession, I am sure you have a gift. No one who has ever attended me has done me more good. I want you to take your profession very, very seriously. If it is true that you have the gift of healing and the gift of music, and I think it is, you will not be unhappy, nor lonely long.”