Rose MacLeod

								

their voyage, when her courage failed her and he had opened to her the
book of Electra's truth and justice.
"Do you think," she said wistfully, "I might stay at your grandmother's
a few days more?"
"You are to stay forever. Grannie dotes upon you."
"No! no! But I shall have to think. I shall have to make my plans."
Again Peter felt yesterday's brand of anger against his imperial lady,
or, he told himself immediately, the unfortunate circumstances of this
misunderstanding. "You run on," he said. "Grannie's where you left her.
If you don't feel like talking you can skip in at that little gate and
the side door up to your room. I'm going back to see Electra."
"You mustn't talk about me!"
"No!" He smiled at her in a specious reassurance, and went striding on
over the path by which she had come.
Electra, in the fulfillment of her intention, had gone scrupulously to
her grandmother's door, to ask if she needed anything, and then, when
she had been denied, returned to the library, where she stood when Peter
appeared on the threshold, as if she had been expecting him. He did not
allow his good impulse to cool, but hurried forward to her with an
abounding interest and a certainty of finding it fulfilled. As at first,
when he had come to her in the garden the day before, he uttered her
name eloquently, and broke out upon the heels of it,--
"I didn't see you all yesterday, after that first minute."
Electra looked at him seriously, and his heart sank. Peter had been
thinking straight thoughts and swearing by crude values in these five
years when he had lived with men and women who said what they meant,
things often foolish and outrageous, but usually honest, and his mind
had got a trick of asserting itself. None of the judgments it had been
called upon to make seemed to matter vitally; but this one
disconcertingly did, and to his horror he found himself wondering if
Electra could possibly mean to be so hateful. Electra meant nothing of
the kind. She had a pure desire toward the truth, and she assumed that
Peter's desire tallied with her own. She felt very strongly on the point
in question, and she saw no reason why he should not offer the greatest
hospitality toward her convictions.
"Peter," she said at once, "you must not talk to me about that woman."
"So she said," Peter was on the point of irresistibly retorting, but he
contented himself with the weak make-shift that at least gains time,--
"What woman?"
"Markham MacLeod's daughter."
"Tom's wife? Tom's widow?"
Electra looked at him in definite reproof.
"You must not do that, Peter," she warned him. "You must not speak of
her in that way."
"For God's sake, why not, Electra?"
"That is not her title. You must not give it to her."
He stared at her for a number of seconds, while she met his gaze
inflexibly. Then his face broke up, as if a hand had struck it. Light
and color came into it, and his mouth trembled.