for they
lay long in bed talking--desultory, reminiscent talk, which sent Peter's
mind back over the months and the last few days, even after Julie was
asleep in the bed next his. Like a pageant, he passed, in review scene
after scene, turning it over, and wondering at significances that he had
not before, imagined. He recalled their first meeting, that instantaneous
attraction, and he asked himself what had caused it. Her spontaneity,
freshness, and utter lack of conventionality, he supposed, but that did
not seem to explain all. He wondered at the change that had even then
come about in himself that he should have been so entranced by her, He
went over his early hopes and fears; he thought again of conversations
with Langton; and he realised afresh how true it was that the old
authorities had dwindled away; that no allegiance had been left; that his
had been a citadel without a master. And then Julie moved through his
days again--Julie at Caudebec, daring, iconoclastic, free; Julie at
Abbeville, mysterious, passionate, dominant; Julie at Dieppe--ah, Julie
at Dieppe! He marvelled that he had held out so long after Dieppe, and
then Louise rose before him. He understood Louise less than Julie,
perhaps, and with all the threads in his hand he failed to see the
pattern. He turned over restlessly. It was easy to see how they had come
to be in London; it would have been more remarkable if they had not so
come together; but now, what now? He could not sum up Julie amid the
shifting scenes of the last few days. She had been so loving, and yet,
in a way, their love had reached no climax. It had, indeed, reached what
he would once have thought a complete and ultimate climax, but plainly
Julie did not think so. And nor did he--now. The things of the spirit
were, after all, so much greater than the things of the flesh. The Julie
of Friday night had been his, but of this night...? He rolled over again.
What had she meant at the play? He told himself her tears were simple
emotion, her laughter simple reaction, but he knew it was not true....

And for himself? Well, Julie was Julie. He loved her intensely. She could
stir him to anything almost. He loved to be with her, to see her, to hear
her, but he did not feel satisfied. He knew that. He told himself that he
was an introspective fool; that nothing ever would seem to satisfy
him; that the centre of his life _was_ and would be Julie; that she was
real, tinglingly, intensely real; but