His first thought had been to seek safety in flight; then that gently humorous philosophy with which he habitually looked life in the face asserted itself, and with a shrug and a muttered “Kismet,” he remained.

Nan appealed to him as no other woman had ever done.  The ineffaceable quality of race about her pleased his fastidious taste; the French blood in her called to his; nor could he escape the heritage of charm bequeathed her by the fair and frail Angele de Varincourt.  Above all, he understood her.  Her temperament—­idealistic and highly-strung, responsive as a violin to every shade of atmosphere—­invoked his own, with its sensitiveness and keen, perceptive faculty.

But this very comprehension of her temperament blinded him to the possibility that there was any danger of her growing to care for him other than as a friend.  He appreciated the fact that she had just received a buffeting from fate, that her confidence was shaken and her pride hurt to breaking-point, and the thought never entered his head that a woman so recently bruised by the hands of love—­or more truly, love’s simulacrum—­could be tempted to risk her heart again so soon.

Feeling very safe, therefore, in the fact of his marriage, which was yet no marriage, and sure that there was no chance of his hurting Nan, he let himself love her, keeping his love tenderly in one of those secret empty rooms of the heart—­empty rooms of which only the thrice-blessed in this world have no knowledge.

Outwardly, all that Peter permitted himself was to give her an unfailing friendship, to surround her with an atmosphere of homage and protection and adapt himself responsively to her varying moods.  This he did untiringly, demanding nothing in return—­and he alone knew the bitter effort it cost him.

Gradually Nan began to lean upon him, finding in the restfulness of such a friendship the healing of which she stood in need.  She worked at her music with suddenly renewed enthusiasm, secure in the knowledge that Peter was always at hand to help and criticise with kindly, unerring judgment.  She ceased to rail at fate and almost learned to bring a little philosophy—­the happy philosophy of laughter—­to bear upon the ills of life.

Consciously she thought of him only as Peter—­Peter, her good pal—­and so long as the pleasant, even course of their friendship remained uninterrupted she was never likely to realise that something bigger and more enduring than mere comradeship lay at the back of it all.  She, too, like Mallory, reassured herself with the fact of his marriage—­though the wife she had never seen and of whom Peter never spoke had inevitably receded in her mind into a somewhat vague and nebulous personality.

“Well?” demanded Kitty triumphantly one day.  “And what is your opinion of Peter Mallory now?”

As she spoke, she caressed with light finger-tips a bowl of sun-gold narcissus—­Mallory habitually kept the Edenhall flat supplied with flowers.