She glanced toward the door, but he kept his place. Peter was conscious that of all the things he ought to feel, he could not summon one. It did not seem exactly the woman he had loved who was dismissing him. This was a handsome and unfriendly stranger, and in the bottom of his heart surged a sweet new feeling that was like hope and pain. "Let us not talk any more," she was saying, with that air of extreme courtesy which still invited him to go. Peter walked slowly to the door. "I am wondering"--he hesitated. "Why do you say that, Electra? Why do you tell me I am in love with her?" He looked as shy as a girl. It struck her full in the mind that even in this interview she had no part. She had refused a lover, and he was going away with his thoughts stirred by another woman. "I said so," she repeated clearly, "because it is true. You are in love with her. Good-by." Peter turned to her with one of his quick movements and held out his hand. She did not take it. "Won't you shake hands, Electra?" he asked. "I should think we might be friends." Honest sorrow moved his voice. Now, at least, he was thinking of her only. Electra meant to show no resentment, no pain. But she had to be true. "I can't," she said, in a low tone. "Good-by." And Peter, seeing the aversion in her face, not for him, perhaps, but for the moment, got himself hastily out of the room and into the summer road. And there, before he had walked three paces, Peter began to sing. He sang softly, not at all because melody was unfitted to the day, but as if what inspired it were too intimate a thing to be revealed. He looked above him, straight ahead, and on every side. The world was beautiful to him at this moment, and he had a desire to drink it up, to be as young and as rich as Apollo. He did feel very rich, not only in his youth, but in the unnamed possibilities trembling before him; and Peter denied himself no pleasure because it was inappropriate to the moment. It would have seemed to him a refusal of the good gifts of life and an affronting of the God who created plenty if, because he had lost Electra, he renounced the delight of a happiness he really felt. By and by he would remember Electra, how dignified she was, how irreproachable, in the moments when her virtues did not get the bit between their teeth and dash away with her; but now, under this abounding summer sun, with the leaves trembling, she withdrew into a gray seclusion like an almost forgotten task--one that had resolved itself into a beneficent fulfillment quite unlike what it had promised. Noble as it was, he had been excused from it, and he felt blissfully free. Something else that swam before him like the gleam of a vision did not look like another task. It was more like a quest for a hero's arming. It fitted his dreams, it went hand in hand with the visions he had had years ago about his painting, when that was all possibility, not work. This was the worshipful righting of an innocent lady.