“No, dear, indeed I don’t.  I’m afraid I don’t know many of the things I—–­”

“There’s no reason why you should know this.  In Wagner’s operas, which I don’t understand, perhaps, but which I love with thrills in my spine—­and that’s a kind of understanding—­whenever a character comes on the stage he or she always is followed by a certain strain of music—­music that expresses character, and seems even to describe a person.  Well, wallflower perfume might be your leitmotif.  Can’t you hear perfume?  I can.  Just as you can seem to see music—­wonderful, changing colours.  The wallflower scent’s all around us now.  It’s you.  But through it I imagine another perfume.  It’s here, too.  It’s been with me for months.  Because I’ve got to feel it’s her spirit, her leitmotif.  The perfume of fresias.  Do you know it?”

“I thought maybe she liked it,” mother said calmly.

“What put that idea in your darling head?”

“Why, because you’ve been havin’ fresias planted in the garden—­and in your room—­as long as they lasted through the spring.  You’d never thought of ’em before as I know of.”

“You witch!  You notice everything.  Who’d believe it, you’re so quiet?”

“Of course I notice things about you.  I wouldn’t be fit to be your mother if I didn’t.  Now, do you feel like tellin’ me things about her?”

“I’m longing to,” said Peter.

They forgot it was late at night.  He told her everything, beginning at the moment when he had plunged through the dryad door and going on to the moment when he had lost, not only the girl, but her friendship, though he said nothing of the Moon dress or the shut-up house.  Even then he did not stop.

“I must have done something inadvertently,” he went on, “to make her stop liking me all of a sudden.  For she did like me at first.  There was no flirting or anything silly about it.  I felt there was a reason for her changing, and ever since, every day and every night, I’ve been trying to make out what it could have been.  I’ve thought the idea might come to me.  But it never has.  That’s partly why I’m so anxious to find her—­to make her explain.  I was too taken aback, too—­sort of stunned—­to go about it the right way when she changed to me at the last minute there on the dock.  Once I could understand, why, I might start with her again at the beginning and work up.  It would give me a chance—­the chance I once thought I had, you know—­to try to make her care.  Maybe it would be no use.  Maybe I’m not the kind she could ever like that way, even if things hadn’t gone wrong.  But—­but, Mother, it’s been just agony to think that all this time she’s hated me through some beastly misunderstanding which might easily have been cleared up.”

“My poor boy!” the kind voice soothed him.  “I guess that’s the worst pain of all.  I knew there was something hurting you, but I didn’t know ’twas as hard a hurt as this.  But ’twill come right.  I feel it will—­if she’s really the right girl.”