7It was curious, perhaps, that Peter had been at Sky Peals over a month before Fran saw what was so very, very obvious.
It was a warm August evening, and she was sitting on the terrace, reading by the light of a hand-lamp. Nan and Peter had gone for a stroll in the dusk, and John was dining in town. She herself felt rather happy, for she had lately begun to take up some of the threads of her old economic history work, and had found the effort less difficult than she had feared.
Suddenly there came a sharp stab of light amidst the blackness of the gardens. It reminded her of the fire on the mountains that she had seen years before at Innsbrück. . . . She could guess what it was—Peter lighting a cigar. She went on reading for a while. . . . But at length she put down her book with a sigh o
