would sit on the floor with her head on his knee and her hand against his. Then suddenly she would lean back and pull his head down and kiss his eyes, and then very slowly let him go. And the fierceness, the passion of her love for him roused in him a strength of devotion that all the years of unhappiness had been storing. He was still only a boy—the first married year brought his twenty-seventh birthday—but his love for Clare had the depth and reserve that belongs to a man.
Mrs. Launce, watching them both, was sometimes frightened. “God help them both if anything interferes,” she said once to her husband. “I've seen that boy look at Clare with a devotion that hurts. Peter's no ordinary mortal—I wonder, now and again, whether Clare's worth it all.”
But this year seemed to silence all her fears. The happiness of that little house shone through Chelsea. “Oh, we're dining with the Westcotts to-night—they'll cheer us up—they're always so happy”—“Oh! did you see Clare Westcott? I never saw any one so radiant.”
And once Bobby said to Alice: “We made a mistake, old girl, about that marriage. It's made another man of Peter. He's joy personified.”
“If only,” Alice had answered, “destiny or whatever it is will let them alone. I feel as though they were two precious pieces of china that a housemaid might sweep off the chimney piece at any moment. If only nobody will touch them—”
Meanwhile Peter had forgotten, utterly forgotten, the rest of the world. Walls and fires—for a year they had held him. The Roundabout versus the World. . . . What of old Frosted Moses, of the Sea Road, of Stephen, of Mr. Zanti? What of those desperate days in Bucket Lane? All gone for nothing?
Clare, perhaps, with this year behind her, hardly realised the forces against which she was arrayed. Beware of the Gods after silence. . . .
IV
And, after all, it was Clare herself who flung down the glove.
