Rose MacLeod

								

feet. The reins lay loosely, and Electra, who seldom did anything
without a painstaking consciousness, even forgot her driving, and let
her hands relax into an unlawful ease. They might almost tremble, she
was afraid, she felt so undone with some emotion,--disappointment,
anger? She did not know. But she kept her eyes fixed on a spot directly
ahead, and in spite of herself thought turbulently. She could not help
feeling that Peter would be surprised if he knew how he seemed to her
after this return, almost a stranger, and one who awoke in her no desire
for further acquaintance. He was not ministering to her pride in any
way. He was not in the least a person whom she could flaunt at
gatherings of the intellectually worshipful, with any chance of his
doing her credit. She herself had tried to talk art with him, and Peter
grew dumb. She could not guess it was because she did not speak his
language, which had become almost a sign language, touched here and
there with idiom and the rest understood,--a jargon of technicalities,
mostly, it seemed, humorous, he appeared to mean them so lightly. Before
he went abroad, she, who had read exhaustively in art, used to impart
fact and theory to him in a serious fashion, and Peter had humbly
accepted them. But now, when she opened her lips about his darling work
which was so intimate a part of him that it was almost like play, he had
a queer horror of what she was saying, as if she were beginning a
persistent solo on a barbarous instrument; he could think of nothing but
putting his hands over his ears and running off. But instead he had only
been silent. She could not understand Peter's having read so few books
and being in possession of such a meagre treasury of formulated opinion.
The truth was that he had so many pleasant things to think about that
books were only the dullard's task. His thoughts were not very
consecutive or toward any particular end; they were merely a pageant of
dancing figures, sometimes fantastic, sometimes dramatically grave, but
always absorbing. This Electra could not know. Now it was running
through her mind that Peter, though he had won the great prizes of art,
was mysteriously dull and not what she considered a distinguished figure
at all. His air, his clothes even--she found herself shrinking a little,
at the moment, from the slovenly figure he made, his long legs drawn up
in the carriage so that he could clasp his hands about his knees, while
he went brightly on. For now Peter had found something to talk about.
His topic shone before him as he handled it. This was almost like
painting a picture with a real brush on real canvas, it grew so fast.
"We might found a community," he was urging as warmly, she thought, as
if he meant it. "Osmond can dig. I can. I wonder if you could milk the
cow!"
"I have certainly never tried to milk a cow," said Electra, in a tone
that bit.