"He's given us up, Bobby, now that he's found so many new friends. I shouldn't have expected him to do that. I'm disappointed."

But Bobby nodded his head. "The boy's all right," he said, "he's just trying to forget young Stephen and he forgets things better in Cardillac's company than he does in mine--I'm not lively enough for that kind of thing. He'll come back--"

But, at the same time, Bobby was anxious. Things were wrong up there at The Roundabout, very wrong. He knew Clare and Cards and Peter and Mrs.

Rossiter, in all probability better than any one alive knew them--and he was no fool.

Then Peter came back to him and was received as though he had never left him; and Alice, who had intended to tell Mr. Peter what she thought of his disloyalty, had no word to say when she saw his white drawn face and his tired eyes.

"There's something awfully wrong up there," said Alice to Bobby that night. "Bobby, look after him."

But Bobby who had heard by that time what Peter had to say shut his mouth tight. Then at last:

"Our friend Cardillac has a good deal to answer for," and left Alice to make what she could out of it.

Meanwhile up in Bobby's dusty old room, called by courtesy "The Study"

but having little evidence of literature about it save an edition of Whyte-Melville and a miscellaneous collection of Yellow-backs, Peter had poured out his soul:

"Bobby, I feel as though I'd just been set up with my back against the wall for every one to make shies at. Everything's going wrong--everything. The ground's crumbling from under my feet. First it's young Stephen, then it's Clare, then my book fails (don't let's humbug--you know it's an utter failure) then I quarrel with Cards, then that damned woman--" he stopped at the thought of Mrs. Rossiter and drove his hands together. Then he went on more quietly. "It's like fighting in a fog, Bobby. There's the thing I want somewhere, just beside me--I want Clare, Clare as she used to be when we were first married--but I can't get at her and yet, through it all, I don't know what it is that stops me.

"I know I hadn't thought of her enough--with the book and Stephen and everything. Cards told me that pretty straight--but now I've seen all that and I'm ready to do anything--anything if she'll only love me again."

"Go directly to her and tell her," said Bobby; "have it all out in the open with her."

"That's just it," Peter answered, "I never seem to get her alone.

There's always either her mother or Cards there. Cards sees her alone much more than I do, but, of course, she likes his company better than mine just now. I'm such a gloomy beggar--"

"Nonsense," said Bobby roughly. "You believe anything that any one tells you. They tell you that you're gloomy and depressing and so you think you are. They didn't find you gloomy at Brockett's did they? And Alice and I have never found you depressing. Don't listen to that woman.

Clare's always been under her influence and it's for you to take her out of it--not to lie down quietly and say she's too much for you--but there's another thing," he added slowly and awkwardly, after a moment's pause.

"What's that?" asked Peter.

"Well--Cards," said Bobby at last. "Oh! I know you'll say I hate him.

But I don't. I don't hate him. I've always known him for what he was--in those days at Dawson's when if you flattered him he was kind, and if you didn't he was contemptuous. At Cambridge it was the same. There was only one fellow there I ever saw him knock under to--a man called Dune--and he was out and away exceptional anyhow, at games and work and everything. Now _he_ made Cards into a decent fellow for the time being, and if he'd had the running of him he might have turned all that brilliance into something worth having.

"But he vanished and Cards has never owned his master since. Everything was there, ready in him, to be turned one way or the other, and after he left Cambridge there was his silly mother and a sillier London waiting to finish him--now he's nothing but Vanity and Fascination--and soon there'll be nothing but Vanity."

"You're unjust to him, Bobby, you always have been.

"Well, perhaps I am. He's always treated me with such undisguised contempt that it's only human that I should be a little prejudiced. But that's neither here nor there--what is the point, Peter, is that he's too much up at your place. Too much for his own good, too much for yours, and--too much for--Clare's."

"Bobby!"

"Oh yes--I know I'm saying a serious thing--but you asked me for my advice and I give it. I don't say that Cards means any harm but people will talk and it wouldn't do you any damage in Clare's eyes either, Peter, if you were to stand up to him a little."

Peter smiled. "Dear old Bobby! If any one else in the world had said such a thing of course I should have been most awfully angry, but I've always known how unfair you were about Cards. You never liked him, even in the Dawson days. You just don't suit one another. But I tell you, Bobby, that I'd trust Cards more than I'd trust any one in the world. Of course Clare likes to be with him and of course he likes to be with her.

They suit one another exactly. Why, he's splendid! The other day when I'd been a perfect beast--losing my temper like a boy of ten--you should have heard the way he took it. One day, Bobby, you'll see how splendid he is."

Bobby said no more.

Peter went on again: "No, it's my mother-in-law's done the damage.

You're right, the thing to do is to get Clare alone and have it right out with her. We'll clear the mists away."

Bobby said: "You know Peter, both Alice and I would do anything in the world to make you happy--anything."

Peter gripped his hand.

"I know you would. If I could forget young Stephen," he caught his breath--"Bobby, I see him everywhere, all the time. I lie awake hours at night thinking about him. I see him in my sleep, see him sometimes grown-up--splendid, famous.... Sometimes I think he comes back. I can see him, lying on his back and looking up at the ceiling, and I say to myself, 'Now if you don't move he'll stay there' ... and then I move and he's gone. And I haven't any one to talk about him to. I never know whether Clare thinks of him or not. He was so splendid, Bobby, so strong. And he loved me in the most extraordinary way. We'd have been tremendous pals if he'd lived.

"I could have stood anything if I'd been able to see him growing up, had him to care about.... I'm so lonely, Bobby--and if I don't make Clare come back to me, now that the book's failed, I--I--I'll go back to Scaw House and just drink myself to the devil there with my old father; he'll be glad enough."

"You once told me," Bobby said, "about an old man in your place when you were a kid, who said once, 'It isn't life that matters but the courage you bring to it--' Well, that's what you're proving now, Peter."

"Yes, but why me? I've had a bad time all my life--always been knocked about and cursed and kicked. Why should it go on all the time--all the time?"

"Because They think you're worth it, I suppose," said Bobby.

III

And the result of that conversation was that, on that very night Peter made his appeal. They had had a silent evening (Mrs. Rossiter was staying in the house at this time), and at last they all had gone up to bed. Peter stayed for a moment in his dressing-room, seeing his white face in the looking-glass, hearing the beating of his heart and then with a hand that strangely trembled, knocked on Clare's door.

Her voice sounded frightened, he thought, as she called to him to come in. Indeed, as he entered she folded a letter that she had been reading, and put it in a drawer in the dressing-table at which she was sitting.

It was only seldom now that he disturbed her in that room. She had turned on the electric light over her dressing-table; the rest of the room was in darkness. She seemed to Peter very fragile and tiny as she sat there in her black evening frock, her breast rising and falling as though something had suddenly frightened her, her eyes wide and startled. He felt a gross, coarse brute as he stumbled, coming across the dark floor to her.

"My God," he cried in his heart, "put everything right now--let this make everything right."

His big square body flung huge fantastic shadows upon the wall, but he looked, as he faced her, like a boy who had come to his master to confess some crime.

Apparently she was reassured now, for she took off her necklace and moved about the things on her table as though to show him that she was on the point of undressing.

"Well, Peter, what is it?" she said.

"I've come--Clare--just a moment--I want a talk."

"But it's late, I'm tired--won't some other time do?"

"No, I want it now."

"What is it?"

She was looking into the glass as she spoke to him.

He pulled a little chair over to her and sat forward so that his knees nearly touched her thin black dress. He put out his big hand and caught one of her little ones; he thought for a moment that she was going to resist--then it lay there cold as ice.

"Clare--darling--look here, everything's been wrong with both of us--for ages. And I've come--I've come--because I know it's been very largely my fault. And I've come to say that everything will be different now and I want you to let things--be--as they were before--"

For a moment he fancied that he saw a light leap into her eyes; he felt her hand tremble for a moment in his. Then the expression was gone.