“Why Ollie, as if it was anything—when we've all of us more or less grown up together, haven't we—and you and Peter—” She stopped—oh what was the use of being tactful! “I suppose it sounds—put on—and—sentimental and all that—saying it,” she laughed nervously, “but we—all of us—Peter and myself—we're so really sorry—if you'll believe us—only it was hard to know if you wanted to have us say so—how awfully sorry we were. And then asking you out here with this howling mob doesn't seem much like it, does it? but Peter was going to be here—and Ted—and I knew what friends you'd been in college—I thought maybe—but I just didn't want you to think it was because we didn't care—”
“I know—and—and—thanks—and I do appreciate, Elinor.” Oliver noticed with some slight terror that his own voice seemed to be getting a little out of control. But what she had just said took away his last doubt as to whether she was really the kind of person Ted ought to marry—and in spite of feeling as if he were trapping her into a surgical operation she knew nothing about, he kept on.
“It gets pretty bad, sometimes,” he said simply and waited. Last night—if things came out right later—will have been just what Elinor needed most, he decided privately. She had always struck him as being a little too aloof to be quite human—but she was changing under his eyes to a very human variety of worried young girl.
“Well, isn't there something we can really do?” she said diffidently, then changing,
“Oh I mean it—if you don't think it's only—probing—asking that?” as she changed again.
“Not a thing I'm afraid, Elinor, though I really do thank you.” He hated his voice—it sounded so brave. “It's just finished, that's all. Can't kick very well. Oh no,” as she started to speak, “it doesn't hurt to talk about, really. Helps, more. And Peter and Ted help too—especially Ted.”
He watched her narrowly—changing color like that must mean a good deal with Elinor.
Then “Why Ted?” she said, almost as if she were talking to herself and then started to try and make him see that that didn't matter—a spectacle to which he remained gratifiedly blind. He addressed his next remarks at the dish of jam so that she wouldn't be able to catch his eye.
“Oh, I'm not slamming Peter's sympathetic soul, El, you know I'm not—but Ted and I just happened to go through such a lot of the war and after it together—and then Ted saw a good deal more of Nancy. Peter's delightful. And kind. But he does assume that because lots of people get engaged and disengaged again all over the lot these days as if they were cutting for bridge-partners there isn't anything particularly serious in things like that. Nothing to really make you make faces and bust, that is. Well, ours happened to be one of the other kind—that's the difference. And Peter, well, Peter isn't exactly the soul of constancy when it comes to such matters—”
“Peter—oh Peter—if you knew the millions of girls that Peter's kept pictures of—”