Well, he had been self-absorbed.

It occurred to him dimly that the thing to have done if he had known a little more about women, had practised with them, was to have provoked her at this point to the tears which should have sealed the renewal of his claim to her.

What he said was, very quietly: "Of course I never meant, Eunice, that you shouldn't have everything you want." "Oh," she seemed to have found a suffocating quality in his gentleness, against which she struck out with drowning gestures, "if you could only understand what it would mean to me never to have anybody I liked to talk to about things,--anybody I liked to be with all the time!" She was choked and aghast at the enormity of it.
"But I thought...." Peter was not able to go on with that.

"Isn't there anybody you like to be with, Eunice ?" "Yes," said Eunice.

"Burton Henderson." Mutinous and bright she looked at him out of the chair with a hand on either arm of it poised for flight or defence.