Peter showed a queer face as he had often shown it before—that is by turning it straight away. 'What will you have? I haven't ceased to like her.'
'She's beautiful—she's a dear of course,' Lance allowed; 'but what is she to you, after all, and what is it to you that, as to anything whatever, she should or she shouldn't?'
Peter, who had turned red, hung fire a little. 'Well—it's all simply what I make of it.'
There was now, however, in his young friend a strange, an adopted insistence. 'What are you after all to her?'
'Oh nothing. But that's another matter.'
'She cares only for my father,' said Lance the Parisian.
'Naturally—and that's just why.'
'Why you've wished to spare her?'
'Because she cares so tremendously much.'
Lance took a turn about the room, but with his eyes still on his host.
'How awfully—always—you must have liked her!'