"Of course I'm pleased!" Nan forced the obviously expected enthusiasm into her affirmative, then, swallowing the last mouthful of milk with an effort, she added: "It'll be topping."
Kitty took the glass from her and with an admonishing, "Now try and have a good sleep," she departed, blissfully unconscious of how effectually she herself had just destroyed any possibility of slumber.
Peter coming! The first thrill of pure joy at the thought of seeing him again was succeeded by a rush of apprehension. She felt herself caught up into a whirlpool of conflicting emotions. The idea of marriage with Roger Trenby seemed even more impossible than ever with the knowledge that in a few days Peter would be there, close beside her with that quiet, comprehending gaze of his, while every nerve in her body would be vibrating at the mere touch of his hand.
In the dusk of her room, against the shadowy background of the blind-drawn windows, she could visualise each line of his face--the level brows and the steady, grey-blue eyes under them--eyes that missed so little and understood so much; the sensitive mouth with those rather tired lines cleft each side of it that deepened when he smiled; the lean cheek-bones and squarish chin.
She remembered them all, and they kept blotting out the picture of Roger as she had so often seen him--big and bronzed by the sun--when he came striding over the cliffs to Mallow Court. The memory was like a hand holding her back from casting in her lot with him.
And then the pendulum swung back and she felt that to marry--someone, anyone--was the only thing left to her. She was frightened of her love for Peter. Marriage, she argued, would be--_must_ be--a shield and buckler against the cry of her heart. If she were married she would be able to stifle her love, crush it out, behind those solid, unyielding bars of conventional wedlock.
The fact of Peter's own marriage seemed to her rather dream-like. There lay the danger. They had never met until after his wife had left him, so that her impression of him as a married man was necessarily a somewhat vague and shadowy one.
But there would be nothing vague or shadowy about marriage with Trenby! That Nan realised. And, utterly weary of the persistent struggle in her heart, she felt that it might cut the whole tangle of her life once and for all if she passed through the strait and narrow gate of matrimony into the carefully shepherded fold beyond it. After all, most women settled down to it in course of time, whether their husbands came up to standard or not. If they didn't, the majority of wives contrived to put up with the disappointment, and probably she herself would be so fully occupied with the putting up part of the business that she would not have much time in which to remember Peter.