... Meanwhile, in his study at the top
of the house, "The Stone House" was still lying, waiting, at Chapter II--
But it was Clare who was the eternal wonder. He could not think of her,
create her, pile up the offerings before her altar, sufficiently. That he
should have had the good fortune... It never ceased to amaze him.
As the weeks and months passed his life centred more and more round Clare
and the house that they shared together. He knew now many people in London;
they were invited continually to dinners, parties, theatres, dances.
Clare's set in London had been very different from Peter's literary world,
and they were therefore acclaimed citizens of two very different circles.
Peter, too, had his reviewing articles in many papers--the whole whirligig
of Fleet Street. (How little a time, by the way, since that dreadful day
when he had sat on that seat on the Embankment and talked to the lady with
the Hat!)
His days during this first year of married life were full, varied, exciting
as they could be--and yet, through it all, his eye was always upon that
little house, upon the moment when the door might be closed, the fire
blazing and they two were alone, alone--
He was, indeed, during this year, a charming Peter. He loved her with the
hero worship of a boy, but also with a humour, a consciousness of success,
a happy freedom that denied all mawkish sham sentiment.
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