And then Peter, meeting his pleased look and understanding it, winced back from it, and coloured, and bent over his brown paper and string. He valued Rodney's appreciation, a thing not easily won. He felt that in this moment he had won it, as he had never won it before. For he knew that Rodney liked pluck, and was thinking him plucky.
Against his will he muttered, half beneath his breath, "Oh, it isn't really what you call good. It is good, you know: I think it's good; but you won't. You'll call it abominable."
"Oh," said Rodney.
Peter went on, with a new violence, "I know all you'll say about it, so I'm not going to give you the opportunity of saying it till I'm gone. You needn't think I'm going to tell you now and let you tell me I'm wrong. I'm not wrong; and if I am I don't care. Please don't stay any more; I'd rather you weren't here to-night. I don't want to tell you anything; only I had just got to say that, because you were thinking.... Oh, do go now."
Rodney sat quite still and looked at him, into him, through him, beyond him. Then he said, "You needn't tell me anything. I know. Lucy and you are going together."
Peter stood up, rather unsteadily.
"Well? That's not clever. Any fool could have guessed that."
"Yes. And any fool could guess what I'm going to say about it, too. You know it all already, of course...."
Rodney was groping for words, helplessly, blindly.
"Peter, I didn't know you had it in you to be a cad."