et Hilary's eyes searching his own. Peggy was in the
background; later she would be a comforting, easing presence; but for the
moment the situation held only these two, and Peter's eyes pleaded to
Hilary's, "Forgive me; I am horribly sorry," and in Hilary's strained
face shame intolerably grew, so that Peter looked away from it, bending
over Illuminato in his arms.

It was Peggy who broke the silence with a tearful laugh.

"Oh, don't look like that, you poor darling boys! Peter, little dear
Peter ... you must try and understand! You're good at understanding, you
know. Oh, take it easy, my dear! Take it easy, and see how it's nothing
to matter, how it's all one great joke after all!" Her arm was round his
shoulders as he sat on the table's edge; she was comforting him like a
child. To her he was always about Illuminato's age, a most beloved
infant.

Peter smiled a little at her. "Why, yes, of course it's a joke.
Everything is, isn't it. But ... but...."

He was more than ever a child, stammering unwordable protest, blindly
reaching out for help.

Hilary stood before him now, with his hands in his pockets, nervous,
irritable, weary, shame now masked by self-defence. That was better; but
still Peter kept his eyes for the curled-up child.

"My dear boy," said Hilary, in his sweet, plaintive tones, edged with
irritation, "if people like to be taken in, is it my business?"

And Peggy echoed, "Yes, Peter darling, _is_ it Hilary's business?"

Then Peter laughed suddenly. After all, it was all too hopeless, and too
absurd, for anything else.

"You can't go on, you know," he said then. "You've got to resign." And
Peggy looked at him in surprise, for he spoke now like a man instead of
a child, with a man's finality. He wasn't giving a command, but stating
an obvious fact.

"Darling--we've got to live!" Peggy murmured.

"You mayn't see the necessity," Hilary ironically put the approved answer
into Peter's mouth, "but we, unfortunately, do."

"Oh, don't be silly," said Peter unusually. "You _are_ being silly, you
know; merely absurd. Because, of course, it's simply a question between
resigning and being chucked out before long. You can't go on with this
sort of thing indefinitely. You see," he explained, apologetic now, "it
isn't even as if you did it well. You really don't. And it's an awfully
easy thing to see through, if once anyone gets on the track. All that
rubbish you've saddled Lord Evelyn with--anyone who isn'