Kenyon laughed. "My dear fellow," he said, "everybody knows that. You exuded romance when you arrived late at the Inn. The very waiter guessed it, and was so stirred, being Swiss, that he very nearly poured the soup down your mother's neck. And when your mother looked at you I saw something come into her eyes which showed me that she knew she had lost you. I wouldn't be a mother if you paid me!" And then he held out his hand with that charm of which he was past-master. "'Friend that sticketh closer than a brother,' three years; dashed bit of a slip of a girl, one week,--and where's your friend? Well, good luck, Peter! She's a nice little thing. Dream your dreams, old boy, but don't altogether forget the man who's been through Oxford with you." Peter grasped the hand warmly. "Don't be an ass!" he said. "Go and brush your back hair. It's all sticking up." And when he was alone, except for a golden patch of evening sun which had found its way through his window and had spilt itself on his carpet, Peter pulled out a little white glove from his pocket and kissed it. "O God!" he said. "Help me to become a man." XII No one knew, because no one was told, of the many hours of grief which little Mrs. Guthrie endured after she left Oxford. There were two reasons for this grief. One, the inevitable realization that the time had come for some other woman to take her place with her son. She remained his mother, but she was no longer first. The other, that Peter had not told her about Betty at once and had left it for her to find out, as the others did. And this hurt badly. He had always been in the habit of telling her everything,--first at her knee, then as he stood on a level with her, and finally when he looked down upon her from his great height. Every one of his numerous letters written while he was so far away from home contained the outpourings of his soul--his troubles, difficulties, triumphs, wonderings and short incoherent cries for help. As Kenyon said, she had only to look at him once when he marched into the Old Inn at Woodstock with Betty to know that she had lost him. She waited for him that afternoon to tell her,--but he never spoke. Even as he put her into the train she hoped that he would remember, but he didn't. That wasn't like her Peter, she told herself again and again. What was she to think but that it only needed one short week and a very pretty face to make him forget all the long years of her love and tenderness. It was very, very hard.