Then Peter met full the bright, hard, vivid gaze of the alert Cheriton.
It had an odd expression at this moment; unmistakably inimical,
observantly curious, distinctly sardonic. A faint ironic smile just
touched the corners of his determined mouth. Peter returned the look
with his puzzled, enquiring eyes that sought to understand.

This much, anyhow, he seemed to understand: his rôle was silence. If
Cheriton didn't speak (and Cheriton's expression showed that he knew) and
if Hilary didn't speak ... well, he, Peter, couldn't speak either. He
must acquiesce in what appeared to be a conspiracy to keep this pathetic,
worn-out dilettante in a fool's paradise.

The pathos of it gripped Peter's heart. Lord Evelyn had once known so
well. What havoc was this that one could apparently make of one's
faculties? It wasn't only physical semi-blindness; it was a blindness of
the mind, a paralysis of the powers of discrimination and appreciation,
which, was pitiful. Peter was angry. He thought Hilary and Cheriton so
abominably, unmitigatedly wrong. And yet he himself had said, "If it
makes them happy"--and left that as the indubitable end. Ah, but one
didn't lie to people, even for that.

Peter was brought up sharply, as he had often been before, against
Hilary's strange Hilaryish, perverted views of the conduct of life's
businesses. Then, as usual when he should have felt furthest from
mirth, he abruptly collapsed into sudden helpless laughter.

Lord Evelyn turned the eye-glass on him.

"Eh?" he queried. "Why so? But never mind; you always suffered in that
way, I remember. Get it from your mother, I think; she did, too. Never