Electra struck her hands together in a passionate, unconsidered gesture. But she recalled herself immediately.
"Good-by," she said coldly, and, turning about, went in.
Rose, unquiet over her useless mission to Electra, sought out Peter where he sat in the sun, his mind swaying in its constant rhythm between his happy work and his charming dreams. He left the garden chair and came forward to her, struck by the pathos of her face, and a little irritated, too, because MacLeod's death was a sorrow past, and it seemed unfortunate, at least, that there should be so much melancholy in bright weather.
"Electra is going abroad, you know," she said.
Peter turned with her and they paced along the grass. Rose went on,--
Peter nodded, his mind still with Osmond, but cheering a little in the consciousness of her graceful presence.
"Peter!" She stopped, and laid a finger on his sleeve. "Say something to her! She is going over there to work, to throw herself into that movement. She might as well jump into the Seine."
"Yes," said Peter musingly. "Yes, of course! I'll go see her. I'll go at once."
She assented eagerly. She seemed to hurry him away, and not knowing quite what he was to do when he got there, he found himself, obedient but unprepared, at the other house, before Electra. She was agreeably welcoming. Peter had ceased even to remind her of young love, chiefly because it was a part of her dignity to put the incomplete dream aside. When she was forced to remember, sometimes by a word of grandmother's, it gave her an irritated sense of having once been cheek to cheek with something unworthy of her. But this morning Peter meant nothing whatever. A larger bulk had blotted him out. He plunged, at once.
"I am going to Paris, too, Electra. We shall meet there."
She smiled at him with a fine remoteness.
"Perhaps," she said. Then a wave of her old distaste came over her, and she asked, with the indifference that veils forbidden feeling,--
"We have not mentioned it," he said. Their coming to America together had seemed most natural, but some intonation of her tone made the implication odious. Seeing his look, she said, not giving him time to answer,--
"You will help me with the Brotherhood. I must get in touch with it by every possible means."