“Please do,” they said.
“Thank you,” Fallows answered, and returned with his wooden chair. “If you change the subject I shall have to go.”
“I was just saying that I had found something in the world that my mother knew all the time,” Peter explained.
“Oh, I say, this is important. Moritz must come in,” Fallows told them.
They nodded laughingly.
“Moritz,” he called. “Here's a little boy and girl telling stories—very important stories. You must hear.... We're all one, Peter Mowbray.”
They drew closer together. Berthe was watching Peter intensely, knowing that it was his test, very far from his way. Then she remembered the death-room, and that all things are changed by that. She sat very still, trying to give him strength to go on. “I've always used my head,” he said, “always explained why, and made diagrams. The one time I didn't use my head—well, the best thing happened in my experience.”
Peter was in for it, and weathered gracefully.
“You'll forgive me,” he said, when they asked to know. “I was thinking of meeting Berthe Wyndham. I saw her one day passing through the Square in Warsaw near the river corner. Well, it all came about, because I went there again the next day at the same time—”
He was a little breathless, but the glad and eager sincerity of his listeners helped him, and he wanted more than all to lift Berthe if he could.