" Moreover there was much talk about
Form. "Here is the new thing in fiction that we are looking for ..." also
"Quite a young man--oh yes, only about eighteen and so modest. You would
never think...."
His name was Rondel and Peter saw him, for a moment, as the crowds parted,
standing, with a tall, grim, elderly woman, apparently his mother, beside
him. He was looking frightened and embarrassed and stood up straight
against the wall as though afraid lest some one should come and snatch him
away.
But Peter saw the world in a dream. He walked about, with Clare beside him,
and talked to many people; then she was stopped by some one whom she knew
and he went on alone. Now there had come back to him the old terror. If he
went back, after this was over, and Clare was still angry with him, he did
not know what he would do. He was afraid....
He smiled, talked, laughed and, in his chest, there was a sharp acute pain
like a knife. He had still with him that feeling that nothing in life now
was worth while and there followed on that a wild impulse to let go, to
fling off the restraints that he had retained now for so long and with such
bitter determination.
He wanted to cast aside this absurd party, to hurry home alone with Clare,
to sit alone with her in the little house and to reach the divine moment
when reconciliation came and they were closer to one another than ever
before--and then there was the horrible suggestion that there would be no
reconciliation, that Clare would make of this absurd quarrel an eternal
breach, that things would never be right again.
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