Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes’ yarn.

“Well, how do you like Kitty’s latest lion?” asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.

“I think he’s a dear,” declared Penelope warmly.  “I liked him immensely—­what I saw of him.”

“He’s such an extraordinary faculty for reading people,” chimed in Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

“Part of a writer’s stock in trade, of course,” replied Barry.  “But he’s a clever chap.”

“Too clever, I think,” said Nan.  “He fills one with a desire to have one’s soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows.”

Penelope laughed.

“What nonsense!  I think he’s a delightful person.”

“Possibly.  But, all the same, I think I’m frightened of people who make me feel as if I’d no clothes on.”

“Nan!”

“It’s quite true.  Your most dazzling get-up wouldn’t make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real ‘you’ underneath it all.  Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that!  It’s sheer waste of good material.”

“Well, he’s rather likely to want to get at the real ‘you’ of anybody he meets,” interpolated Barry.  “He was badly taken in once.  His wife was one of the prettiest women I’ve ever struck—­and she was an absolute devil.”

“He’s a widower, then!” exclaimed Penelope.

Barry shook his head regretfully.

“No such luck!  That’s the skeleton in poor old Peter’s cupboard.  Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India.”

“They live apart,” explained Kitty.  “She’s one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she simply couldn’t stand Peter’s literary work.  She was frantically jealous of it—­wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long.  And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was bound to do, she made endless rows.  She has money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has relatives.  Her uncle’s a judge, and she’s several Army cousins married out there.”

“Do you mean she has never come back?” gasped Penelope.

“No.  And I don’t think she intends to if she can help it.  She’s the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment.  She’s spoiled Peter’s life for him”—­Kitty’s voice shook a little—­“and through it all he’s been as patient as one of God’s saints.”

“Still, they’re better apart,” commented Barry.  “While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she’s away.  She was spoiling his work as well as his life.  And old Peter’s work means a lot to him.  He’s still got that left out of the wreckage.”