So, after the third time of asking, they were married, in St. Austin’s Church, and Rhoda, coming out of it, whispered to Peter, “Some of the beautiful things are true after all, I do believe;” and he smiled at her and said, “Of course they are.”

They left the boarding-house, because Rhoda was tired of the boarders and wanted a little place to themselves.  Peter, who didn’t really care, but who would have rather liked to stay and be with Peggy and Hilary, pretended that he too wanted a little place to themselves.  So they took lodgings in Greville Street, which runs out of Brook Street.  Rhoda gave up her work and settled down to keep house and do needlework.  They kept a canary in the sitting-room, and a kitten with a blue bow, and Rhoda took to wearing blue bows in her own hair, and sewed all the buttons on her frocks and darned her gloves and stockings and Peter’s socks, and devoted herself to household economy, a subject in which her mother had always tried to interest her without success.  Rhoda thought it a great relief to have escaped from the tiresome boarders who chattered so about things they knew nothing about, and from her own daily drudgery, that had tired her back. (She had been a typist.) It was nice to be able to sit at peace with one’s needlework and one’s own reflections, and have Peter, who was always kind and friendly and cheerful, to brighten breakfast and leave her in peace during the day and come in again to brighten the evening.  Peter’s chatter didn’t worry her, though she often thought it childish and singularly inconsequent; Peter, of course, was only a boy, though such a dear, kind, affectionate boy.  He would spend his evenings teasing the kitten and retying the blue bow, or lying on the rug before the fire, talking nonsense which made Rhoda laugh even when she was feeling low.  Sometimes they would go to Brook Street and spend the evening there; and often Hilary would drop in and smoke with Peter; only Rhoda didn’t much care for these evenings, for she never felt at ease with Hilary, who wasn’t at ease with her either.  The uncultured young creatures of either sex never quite knew where they were with the aesthetic Hilary; at any moment they might tread heavily on his sensitive susceptibilities and make him wince visibly, and no one likes being winced at.  Rhoda in particular was very sensitive; she thought Hilary ill-mannered and conceited, and vaguely resented his attitude towards her without understanding it, for (now that she was removed from the crushing influence of a person who had always ruthlessly shown her her limitations and follies) she didn’t think of herself as uncultured, she with her poetical and artistic tastes, sharpened and refined by contact with the culture of Guy Vyvian and broadened by acquaintance with the art of foreign cities.  On the contrary, she felt in herself yearnings for a fuller and freer life of beauty and grace.  She wasn’t sure that Peter ever felt such yearnings; he seemed quite contented with the ugly rooms in the ugly street, and the dingy lace curtains and impossible pictures; he could make a joke of it all; and things one could make a joke of couldn’t really hurt, thought Rhoda.