McTaggart turned, hesitated, then threw himself into his old seat facing her.
"I'm going to tell you ... everything. It's not a very pretty story—in parts, you know. It's just life—a man's life." His voice was hard.
Jill stirred restlessly. She nodded her head, reclasping her hands in her old attitude round her knees as though it, somehow, nerved her to listen.
So he began. At the very beginning; with his interview in Harley Street and the mystery of his "double heart."
Jill's grey eyes went wide with wonder.
But he went on without a break. He told her of Fantine and Cydonia; of his brief engagement with the latter, and his subsequent disillusion.
For a certain reason of his own he cut out both the time and place, avoiding mention of his inheritance, merely stating that he had been jilted.
Had he been watching Jill's face and seen her indignation rise, flooding the clear skin with colour, his story might have been abridged.
But he still stared out of the window, far from the girl's secret thought. ("How dared this creature throw him over! a silly, brainless..." Jill choked.)
For now he came to a harder part: that year of light adventures abroad. But he forged through it ruthlessly, hurting himself and her. This threatened Jill's ideals, dragging him out of his secret shrine. Peter, no longer her childish idol, but a man, made of baser metal.