Peter stood, his feet deep in dust, and smiled at Urquhart.  Rodney watched the two a little cynically from the wall.  Peter looked what he was—­a limping vagabond tramp, dust-smeared, bare-headed, very much part of the twilight road.  In spite of his knapsack, he had the air of possessing nothing and smiling over the thought.

Peter said, “How funny,” meaning the combination of Urquhart and the motor-car and Tuscany and the grey dawn and Rodney and himself; Urquhart was smiling down at them, his face pale in the strange dawn-twilight.  The scene was symbolical of their whole relations; it seemed as if Urquhart, lifted triumphantly above the road’s dust, had always so smiled down on Peter, in his vagabond weakness.

“I don’t think,” Urquhart was saying, “that you ought to walk so far in the night.  It’s weakening.”  To Urquhart Peter had always been a brittle incompetent, who could not do things, who kept breaking into bits if roughly handled.

“Rodney and I don’t think,” Peter returned, in the hushed voice that belonged to the still hour, “that you ought to motor so loud in the night.  It’s common.  Rodney specially thinks so.  Rodney is sulking; he won’t come and speak to you.”

Urquhart called to his cousin:  “Come with me to Florence, you and Margery.  Or do you hate them too much?”

“Much too much,” Rodney admitted, coming forwards perforce.  “Thank you,” he added, “but I’m on a walking tour, and it wouldn’t do to spoil it.  Margery isn’t, though.  You go, Margery, if you like.”

Urquhart said, “Do, Margery,” and Peter looked wistful, but declined.  He wanted horribly badly to go with Urquhart; but loyalty hindered.

Urquhart said he was going to Venice afterwards, to stay with his uncle Evelyn.

“Good,” said Peter.  “Leslie and I are going to do Venice directly we’ve cleared Florence of its Objects of Beauty.  You can imagine the way Leslie will go about Florence, his purse in his hand, asking the price of the Bargello.  ‘Worth having, isn’t it?  A good thing, I think?’ If we decide that it is he’ll have it, whatever the price; he always does.  He’s a sportsman; I can’t tell you how attached I am to him.”  Peter had not told even Urquhart that one was ever glad of a rest from Leslie.

Urquhart said, “Well, if you won’t come,” and hummed into the paling twilight, and before him fled the circle of golden light and after him swept the dust.  Peter’s eyes followed the golden light and the surging whiteness till a bend in the road took them, and the world was again dim and grey and very still.  Only the little cool wind that soughed among the olive leaves was like the hushed murmuring of quiet waves.  Eastwards, among the still, mysterious hills and silver plains, a translucent dawn was coming.

Peter’s sigh was very unobtrusive.  “After all,” he murmured, “motoring does make me feel sick.”

Rodney gave half a cynical smile with the corner of his mouth not occupied with his short and ugly pipe.  Peter was pipeless; smoking, perhaps, had the same disastrous effect.