“Yes,” agreed Kitty, “and of course he’s writing better than ever now.  Everyone says Lindley’s Wife is a masterpiece.”

Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory’s unfortunate domestic affairs.  The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock.  She felt stunned.  Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.

When the Seymours’ car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion.  She responded to Penny’s remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening’s happenings.

Mingled with the even throb of the engine, she could hear a constant iteration of the words: 

“Married!  Peter’s married!”

And she was quite unconscious that in her mind he was already thinking of him as “Peter.”

CHAPTER V

“PREUX CHEVALIER”

In due course Mallory paid his call upon the occupants of the flat, and entertained both girls immensely by the utter lack of self-consciousness with which he assisted in the preparations for tea—­toasting scones and coaxing the kettle to boil as naturally as they themselves would have done.

He had none of the average Englishman’s mauvaise honte—­though be it thankfully acknowledged that, in the case of the younger generation, the experiences of the war have largely contributed towards rubbing it off.  Mallory appeared serenely unconscious of any incongruity in the fact of a man whose clothes breathed Savile Row and whose linen was immaculate as only that of the Londoner—­determinedly emergent from the grime of the city—­ever is, pottering about in the tiny kitchen, and brooding over the blackly obstinate kettle.

This first visit was soon followed by others, and then by a foursome dinner at the Carlton, Ralph Fenton being invited to complete the party.  Before long Peter was on a pleasant footing of intimacy with the two girls at the flat, though beyond this he did not seek to progress.

The explanation was simple enough.  Primarily he was always aware of the cord which shackled him to a restless, butterfly woman who played at life out in India, and secondly, although he was undoubtedly attracted by Nan, he was not the type of man to fall headlong in love.  He was too fastidious, too critical, altogether too much master of himself.  Few women caused him a single quickened heart-beat.  But it is to such men as this that when at last love grips them, binding them slowly and secretly with its clinging tendrils, it comes as an irresistible force to be reckoned with throughout the remainder of their lives.

So it came about that as the weeks grew into months, Mallory perceived—­dimly and with a quaint resignation to the inevitable—­that Nan and Love were coming to him hand in hand.