"_Tout comprendre--c'est tout pardonner_," quoted Mallory gently.

Nan fenced.

"And do I need pardon?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered simply, "You're not the woman G.o.d meant you to be.

You're too critical, too cold--without pa.s.sion."

"And I a musician?"--incredulously.

"Oh, it's in your music right enough. The artist in you has it. But the woman--so far, no. You're too introspective to surrender blindly.

Artiste, a.n.a.lyst, critic first--only _woman_ when those other three are satisfied."

Nan nodded.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I believe that's true."

"I think it is," he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know--except on the impulse of an imaginative moment."

"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"

"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times--the primeval instincts almost civilised out of you."

Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.

"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared.

"People like you ought to be blindfolded."

"Anything you like--so long as I'm forgiven."

"I think you'll have to be forgiven--in remembrance of the day when you took up a pa.s.senger in Hyde Park!"--smiling.

Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.

"And am I permitted--may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.

"Yes, do. We shall be delighted."

"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.

Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.

"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.

"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him immensely--what I saw of him."

"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed in Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But he's a clever chap."

"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted gla.s.s windows."

Penelope laughed.

"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."

"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."

"Nan!"

"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."

"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck--and she was an absolute devil."

"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.

Barry shook his head regretfully.

"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard.

Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India."

"They live apart," explained Kitty. "She's one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically jealous of it--wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long.

And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was bound to do, she made endless rows. She has money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has relatives. Her uncle's a judge, and she's several Army cousins married out there."

"Do you mean she has never come back?" gasped Penelope.

"No. And I don't think she intends to if she can help it. She's the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for him"--Kitty's voice shook a little--"and through it all he's been as patient as one of G.o.d's saints."

"Still, they're better apart," commented Barry. "While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage."

"Yes," agreed Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now.

Everyone says _Lindley's Wife_ is a masterpiece."

Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory's unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.

When the Seymours' car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion. She responded to Penny's remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening's happenings.

Mingled with the even throb of the engine, she could hear a constant iteration of the words:

"Married! Peter's married!"

And she was quite unconscious that in her mind he was already thinking of him as "Peter."

CHAPTER V

"PREUX CHEVALIER"