..
difference sufficient. Nevertheless, he put them into halfpenny wrappes and
sent them away.
In the struggle to produce these things he had not found that fortnight
wearisome. Before him, every day, there was the evening when Stephen would
return, to which he might look forward. Stephen was always very late--often
it was two o'clock before he came in, but they had a talk before going to
sleep. And here in these evenings Stephen developed in the most wonderful
way, developed because Peter had really never known him before.
Stephen had never appeared to Peter as a character at all. In the early
days Peter had been too young. Stephen had, at that time, been simply
something to be worshipped, without any question or statement. Now that
worshipping had gone and the space that it left had to be filled by some
new relationship, something that could only come slowly, out of the close
juxtaposition that living together in Bucket Lane had provided.
And it was Stephen who found, unconsciously and quite simply, the shape and
colour of Peter's idea of him. Peter had in reality, nothing at all to do
with it, and had Stephen been a whit more self-conscious the effect would
have been spoiled.
In the first place Peter came quite freshly to the way that Stephen looked.
Stephen expressed nothing, consciously, with his body; it was wonderful
indeed considering its size and strength, the little that he managed to do
with it.
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