"Why should she do it at all?" "You best know if it serves you right." "She must think I have never cared." "Your mother arranged this meeting," said Vivette in meditation. "She must have recognised Miranda from the sketch," Peter explained. "How did your mother know you would remember her?" "She knows everything," said Peter simply. Mrs. Paragon sat quietly with Haversham. Haversham had noticed Peter's strange behaviour, and Mrs. Paragon had already told him the whole tale. The dinner proceeded to an end, its essential currents moving beneath the surface. Miranda, with veiled eyes, admitted by no sign that they in the least affected her. But she was gradually flooded with a tide of happiness. She held it off, allowing it only to polish further the glitter of her surface. Peter's crowning misery that night was the speeches. Atterbury, proposing him, was unaware of any need for discretion. He tactfully and wittily pinned the toast to his caricature, already famous, of Peter as the Pilgrim of Love. The table roared with delight, and, finding Peter's response lacking in conviction, was more delighted at this further proof that Atterbury's barbs had stuck. At last the party broke up. Vivette had by that time carefully measured Miranda. "This is good-bye, indeed," she said to Peter at parting. Peter had taken her home to the flat in Soho. His mother had gone with Atterbury and Miranda. "I'm not sure that I shall go," answered Peter obtusely, thinking of his desolate voyage. "Precisely," said Vivette. "That is why I am saying good-bye." Vivette held out her hand. Peter dubiously held it a moment. "I have treated you very badly, Vivette." "I am well pleased." "I owe you so much," he insisted. She put her free hand on his shoulder and lightly kissed him. "How good you are, Vivette," Peter fervently exclaimed. "You're spoiling it, as usual," said Vivette, softly writhing. "Please go at once. I am in the mood to part with you." XLIII Vivette did not without regret see Peter go. But she had seen enough to realise that his adventures were at an end. She surrendered him to a better claim, as always she had decided to do. Her comedy, she told herself, had on the whole finished happily. Vivette had the fortunate ability to be done for ever with things ended. She was too thoroughly a player to wish the curtain raised upon a story technically finished. Peter, too, had rung down the veil on his pilgrimage. He wanted to take up his life from the moment at which he had looked for Miranda in an empty house. It all came vividly to his mind again. The short ride home was thronged with scenes from his life of a boy. They rose from the stirred pools of memory. He could see pale clusters of the evening primrose, and smell the laden air of a place where he had waited for her long ago. He saw a heap of discoloured paper dimly lit by a struck match, lying in a far corner of a raftered room where he had lost her.