He looked
back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
moment it seemed not to.
Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
cold, and planless.
He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
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