had recognized it. He
had only to wait, as he saw, and he would find himself pleasantly beside
her, and at each renewal of the excluding companionship, he was more
subtly aware that it was accorded not to anything he was but to what she
had it in her power so beautifully to make of him.

So perfectly did she strike the key with him, when, in the intervals of
the afternoon's entertainment they found themselves sitting or walking
together, that he could not have imagined her to have been out of it,
not even in a rather long session after tea with Burton Henderson among
the rhododendrons, in which it was apparent from the young man's manner
that she hadn't at least been in tune with him. It occurred just as they
were leaving and served in the flutter of delay it occasioned to fix
the attention of all their party on Eunice coming out of the shrubbery
with young Henderson in her wake, batting aimlessly at the grass-tops
with the racquet which he still carried. There was an air of sulkiness
about him which caused Mrs. Lessing enigmatically to say that Eunice was
altogether too good to that young man. To which Lessing's "Well, if she
is, he doesn't seem to appreciate," served also to confirm Peter in the
role which the effect she produced on himself had created for him. He at
least appreciated the way in which she had made him feel himself the
Distributer of Benefits, to a degree which made it almost obligatory of
her to go on with it.

Successfully as Miss Goodward had kept for Peter during the day his new
relation to his wealth on the one hand and society on the other, she
seemed that evening quite to have abandoned him. While the family was
having coffee on the terrace after dinner, she slipped away from them to
reappear lower down among the rose trees, her white dress gathering all
that was left of the lingering glow. The junior partner, feeling himself
never so much junior, though he knew it was but a scant year or two,
sat on through Lessing's inconsequential comment on business and the
day's adventures, hearing not a word; now and then his chair creaked
with the intensity of his preoccupation. It grew dusk and the lamps
blossomed in the house behind them; presently Clarice slipped away to
the children and the evening damp fell over the rose garden. Peter could
endure it no longer. He believed as he rose suddenly with a stretching
movement that he meant merely to relieve the tension of sitting by
pacing up and down; it