Vivette was deeply offended. Peter was again on fire. She had seen him leap into flame at the sight of a stranger. She had not expected her warning to Peter to be so quickly justified. His behaviour to-night, to put it no higher, was a breach of manners. She had taken Peter very seriously, and he now was doing his best to show she had been mistaken. Her face visibly burned when she remembered how intimately she had abased herself. He had touched a deeper vein in her than she had known, but now he was turning her late act to ridicule. She talked to him only in answers, and several times he found her distastefully watching the absorbed trend of his attention towards Miranda. Peter was now wholly wretched. Between himself and Miranda a gulf was fixed, and Vivette's hostility aggravated his misery. At last Vivette and Peter were isolated from the conversation. Their neighbours were each talking on the other side. Peter felt the strain was becoming intolerable. He had turned from watching Miranda to Vivette, and her contemptuous amusement whipped him to a defence. "This is not what it seems," he said in a low voice. "Perfection at last," Vivette contemptuously suggested. "I have known her for years," he pleaded, glancing towards Miranda. "Really I can't listen. Let us at least bury our own affair." "I am speaking the literal truth." Vivette was surprised at his vehemence. "I am not good at riddles," she said, looking at him closely. "You don't know what has happened." "I know," Vivette retorted in a voice that cut him, "that you have had the discourtesy to be smitten with a strange woman within a week of making love to me." "She is the first woman I ever knew." Vivette looked closely at Peter. "It is the literal truth," he said. "Five years ago." Vivette looked from his face, blazing with veracity, to the very sociable stranger at the other end of the table. "She does not seem to remember," she objected incisively. Peter followed Vivette's glance towards Miranda, radiantly responding to the talk of Atterbury. Conversation broke out again on either side, claiming them. Vivette had seen the truth in Peter's face. Her hostility was checked. She felt another kind of interest in Miranda, watching her carefully. When next she had an opportunity of speaking in a personal way to Peter she had discovered that Miranda was less remote from Peter's excitement than she seemed. Her mind rapidly and generously took in the new position. "What is her name?" she abruptly asked when they were free to talk. "Her name was Miranda. Her other name was not Le Roy. I had lost sight of her." "Had you also forgotten her?" "Till to-night." "And now," said Vivette, not without sarcasm, "you think you have always remembered." "How do you know that?" Peter asked. Vivette looked at his poor face and smiled. "She remembers you, Peter," she said. "She remembers you very well." "She is utterly absorbed," objected Peter. "It is overdone," Vivette decided.