The companions of her earlier girlhood missed her cynicism and
complained that brilliance had given way to commonplace but you could not
find, in the whole of London, a happier marriage.
To Peter she was something entirely new. Norah Monogue was the only woman
with whom, as yet, he had come into any close contact, and she, by her very
humility, had allowed him to assume to her a superior, rather patronising
attitude. The brief vision of Clare Rossiter had been altogether of the
opposite kind, partaking too furiously of heaven to have any earthly
quality. But here in Alice Galleon he discovered a woman who gave him
something--companionship, a lively and critical intelligence, some
indefinable quality of charm--that was entirely new to him.
She chaffed him, criticised him, admired him, absorbed him and nattered him
in a breath. She told him that he had a "degree" of talent, that he was the
youngest and most ignorant person for his age that she had ever met, that
he was conceited, that he was rough and he had no manners, that he was too
humble, that he was a "flopper" because he was so anxious to please, that
he was a boy and an old man at the same time and finally that the Galleon
baby--a solemn child--had taken to him as it had never taken to any one
during the eventful three years of its life.
Behind these contradictory criticisms Peter knew that there was a friend,
and he was sensible enough also to realise that many of the things that
she said to him were perfectly true and that he would do well to take them
to heart.
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