"Lor', Peter, are you back? I suppose I ought to be up, but I was so sleepy. What's the time? Why, what's the matter? Where have you been?"
Peter did not go over to her at once as she had expected. It was not that he felt he could not, or anything like that, but simply that he was only thinking of her in a secondary way. He walked to the dressing-table and lifted the flowers she had worn the night before and put there in a little glass.
"Where have you been, old Solomon?" demanded Julie again.
"Seeing wonders, Julie," said Peter, looking dreamily at the blossoms.
"No? Really? What? Do tell me. If it was anything I might have seen, you were a beast not to come back for me, d'you hear?"
Peter turned and stared at her, but she knew as he looked that he hardly saw her. Her tone changed, and she made a little movement with her hand, "Tell me, Peter," she said again.
"I've seen," said Peter slowly, "a bigger thing than I thought the world could hold, I've seen something so wonderful, Julie, that it hurt—oh, more than I can say. I've seen Love, Julie."
She could not help it. It was a foolish thing to say just then, she knew, but it came out. "Oh, Peter," she said, "did you have to leave me to see that?"
"Leave you?" he questioned, and for a moment so lost in his thought was he that he did not understand what she meant. Then it dawned on him, and he smiled. He did not see as he stood there, the clumsy Peter, how the two were related. So he smiled, and he came over to her, and took her hand, and sat on the bed, his eyes still full of light. "Oh, you've nothing to do with it," he said. "It's far bigger than you or I, Julie. Our love is like a candle held up to the sun beside it. Our love wants something, doesn't it? It burns, it—it intoxicates, Julie. But this love waits, waits, do you understand? It asks nothing; it gives, it suffices all. Year after year it just waits, Julie, waits for anyone, waits for everyone. And you can spurn it, spit on it, crucify it, and it is still there when you—need, Julie." And Peter leaned forward, and buried his face in her little hand.
Julie heard him through, and it was well that before the end he did not see her eyes. Then she moved her other hand which held the half-burnt cigarette and dropped the smoking end (so that it made a little hiss) into her teacup on the glass-topped table, and brought her hand back, and caressed his hair as he lay bent forward there. "Dear old Peter," she said tenderly, "how he thinks things! And when you saw this—this love, Peter, how did you feel?"