* * * * * *
Two days later, a Ferlie with brooding lips, who had twice circumvented Clifford's indications that he came of the Bull-dog Breed, sought Peter where he was engaged in discarding superfluous treasures for which there would be neither nor lot in the life to come.
"Are you sorry, too, about this marriage, Peter?"
He avoided her direct gaze.
"Girls do marry," he said, rather banally.
"I know they do. But there's such a thing as—being in love."
Peter sat back on his haunches, busily dissecting the corpse of a camera.
"I wonder!" cryptically. Said Ferlie, "You always thought queerly about these things."
"Perhaps I still think queerly about them. That is, if common sense is queer.... Phyllis professed to be in love with me. Of course you are naturally more religious. I suppose you inherit it from Mother. I do not mean that you are an orthodox Churchwoman—save the mark! But your sentiments are religious, Ferlie. Love, the Sacrament! ... and so on. I know that Love is a joke invented by Nature to enable her to work out her own ends. If you ask me what I think of Mainwaring I say he just can't be thought about. Whatever he's heading to be he has not got there yet. You could make pretty much what you liked of him. Also, you probably wouldn't see very much of him after that first honeymoon farce was played through. And then you could live your own life; one which might be made as interesting and as full as you pleased. And, you see, it isn't as if there were Anyone Else on the mat."
So that was what Peter thought about it. And now Ferlie knew.