Peter bowed. It already began to change his vision of himself a little, though he wasn’t sure he liked his mystery to be merely tubercular. Though if that was all, why in the world—but he saw that he could only listen and wait.
“Then—Honolulu didn’t serve very long. We had to go farther away from life. Now we’re in Tahiti. It’s—it’s a very wonderful climate.”
Mrs. Wayne rose, drew the crimson curtain to one side, and looked out. It was a moment before she spoke, and as she spoke she sat down again with helpless grace.
“I find it very hard to tell. I don’t think I can tell you it all.”
“I don’t see why you should have come at all, unless you are going to tell me everything there is to tell. But if you’ve really funked it, I don’t care, you know.” Thus Peter, maintaining his bravado.
“You don’t help me out.” The blue eyes rested on him critically. “But I suppose it’s not your fault. Since you don’t know anything about anything——”
“I can’t give you a leg up. No.”
She frowned a little, as if troubled by his phrasing, but resigned herself to it. “No; you can’t give me a leg up.”
“I say—” He leaned forward with a sudden impulse. “Why don’t I go back with you? Or come out later? Lots of people going to Tahiti now, you know, since they’ve exhausted the Spanish Main. Plenty of attractions: drives round the island, perfect scenery, native customs on tap—ordeal by fire and hot stones. It’s in the advertisements along with the rates and sailings. No reason why I shouldn’t come.”
She had drawn back while he spoke with a perfectly obvious terror. With parted lips, and coiled hair, and her very blood (it seemed) turned white, she looked like Greek tragic masks that he had seen in museums. These he had always thought grinning prevarications; now, he acknowledged their authenticity. His jauntiness faded into a stare. Then she pulled herself together, as Peter would have said, by slow, difficult degrees, like a kaleidoscope turned too slowly—pitiful to see.