o have his help on the Gem.

Vyvian broke out about Cheriton.

"Did you see that grand fellow who was too proud to know me? Driven you
away too, has he? We don't know people in boarding-houses--we're in our
private flat ourselves! It makes me sick!"

But his vulgarity when he was angry was a shade less revolting, because
more excusable, than when he wasn't. So Peter bore it, and even tried to
be comforting, and to talk about pictures. Vyvian really knew something
about art; Peter was a little surprised to find that he knew so much,
remembering certain curious blunders of his in the Gem.

He did not talk about the Gem to Vyvian; instinctively he avoided it.
Peter had a rather useful power of barring his mind against thoughts that
he did not desire to have there; without reasoning about it, he had
placed the Gem in this category.

He was absently watching the dim blue of the Euganean Hills against the
clearer blue of the sky when he discovered that Vyvian was talking about
Rhoda Johnson.

"A dear little gurl, with real possibilities, if one could develop them.
I do my best. She's fond enough of me to let me mould her atrocious
taste. But what can one do to fight the lifelong influence of a home like
that--a mother like that? Oh, frightful! But she _is_ fond of me, and
there's her hope--"

"Good-bye," said Peter. "I must go." He could not for the life of him
have said any of the other things he was thinking. He would have given
a lot to have been Cheriton for the moment, so that he wouldn't mind
being rude and violent. It was horribly feeble; all he could say was
"Good-bye." Having said it, he went abruptly.

He sighed as he went back to Urquhart and Leslie. Things were so
difficult to manage. One left one's friends to comfort a hurt bounder;
that was all very well, but what if the bounder comforted was much more
offensive than the bounder hurt? However, it was no good reasoning about
these things. Peter knew that one had to try and cheer up the hurt, in
the face of all reason, simply because one felt so uncomfortable
oneself if one didn't.

But it was almost worth while to have a few rather revolting people
about; they threw the others into such glorious relief. As long as there
were the nice people, who laughed at life and themselves, playing about
the world, nothing else in particular mattered. And it was really
extraordinarily good luck that Urquhart should happen to be playing about
Venice at the same time