Mr. Charteris looked at the colonel with eyes that were sad and hurt and wistful. "I am perfectly aware of your reason for telling me this,"

he said, candidly. "I know I have always been thought a mercenary man since my marriage. At that time I fancied myself too much in love with Anne to permit any sordid considerations of fortune to stand in the way of our union. Poor Anne! she little knows what sacrifices I have made for her! She, too, would be dreadfully unhappy if I permitted her to realize that our marriage was a mistake."

"G.o.d help her--yes!" groaned Musgrave.

"And as concerns Patricia, you are entirely right. It would be hideously unfair to condemn her to a life of comparative poverty. My books sell better than you think, Rudolph, but still an author cannot hope to attain affluence so long as he is handicapped by any reverence for the English language. Yes, I was about to do Patricia a great wrong. I rejoice that you have pointed out my selfishness. For I have been abominably selfish. I confess it."

"I think so," a.s.sented Musgrave, calmly. "But, then, my opinion is, naturally, rather prejudiced."

"Yes, I can understand what Patricia must mean to you"--Mr. Charteris sighed, and pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead in a graceful fashion,--"and I, also, love her far too dearly to imperil her happiness. I think that heaven never made a woman more worthy to be loved. And I had hoped--ah, well, after all, we cannot utterly defy society! Its prejudices, however unfounded, must be respected. What would you have? This dunderheaded giantess of a Mrs. Grundy condemns me to be miserable, and I am powerless. The utmost I can do is to refrain from whining over the unavoidable. And, Rudolph, you have my word of honor that henceforth I shall bear in mind more constantly my duty toward one of my best and oldest friends. I have not dealt with you quite honestly. I confess it, and I ask your pardon." Mr. Charteris held out his hand to seal the compact.

"Word of honor?" queried Colonel Musgrave, with an odd quizzing sort of fondness for the little novelist, as the colonel took the proffered hand. "Why, then, that is settled, and I am glad of it. I told you, you know, it wouldn't do. See you at supper, I suppose?"

And Rudolph Musgrave glanced at the bath-house, turned on his heel, and presently plunged into the beech plantation, whistling cheerfully. The effect of the melody was somewhat impaired by the apparent necessity of breaking off, at intervals, in order to smile.

The comedy had been admirably enacted, he considered, on both sides; and he did not object to Jack Charteris's retiring with all the honors of war.

V

The colonel had not gone far, however, before he paused, thrust both hands into his trousers' pockets, and stared down at the ground for a matter of five minutes.

Musgrave shook his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them.

Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but--well!

one must fight fire with fire."

Thereupon, he retraced his steps. When he had come to the thin spot in the thicket, Rudolph Musgrave left the path, and entered the shrubbery.

There he composedly sat down in the shadow of a small cedar. The sight of his wife upon the beach in converse with Mr. Charteris did not appear to surprise Colonel Musgrave.

Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times, and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous, and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest, the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in the heart of a great pearl.

"Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But G.o.d keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset--especially a parasol he gave me last month."

"Indeed," protested Mr. Charteris, "he saw nothing. I was too quick for him."

She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him looking at it. Accordingly, I paid no attention to what he said. But you--ah, Jack, you were splendid!

I suppose we shall have to elope at once now, though?"

Charteris gave her no immediate answer. "I am not quite sure, Patricia, that your husband is not--to a certain extent--in the right. Believe me, he did not know you were about. He approached me in a perfectly sensible manner, and exhibited commendable self-restraint; he has played a difficult part to admiration. I could not have done it better myself.

And it is not for us who have been endowed with gifts denied to Rudolph, to reproach him for lacking the finer perceptions and sensibilities of life. Yet, I must admit that, for the time, I was a little hurt by his evident belief that we would allow our feeling for each other--which is rather beyond his comprehension, isn't it, dear?--to be coerced by mercenary considerations."

"Oh, Rudolph is just a jacka.s.s-fool, anyway." She was not particularly interested in the subject.

"He can't help that, you know," Charteris reminded her, gently; then, he asked, after a little: "I suppose it is all true?"

"That what is true?"

"About your having no money of your own?" He laughed, but she could see how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions. "I ask, because, as your husband has discovered, I am utterly sordid, my lady, and care only for your wealth."

"Ah, how can you expect a man like that to understand--you? Why, Jack, how ridiculous in you to be hurt by what the brute thinks! You're as solemn as an owl, my dear. Yes, it's true enough. My father was not very well pleased with us--and that horrid will--Ah, Jack, Jack, how grotesque, how characteristic it was, his thinking such things would influence you--you, of all men, who scarcely know what money is!"

"It was even more grotesque I should have been pained by his thinking it," Charteris said, sadly. "But what would you have? I am so abominably in love with you that it seemed a sort of desecration when the man lugged your name into a discussion of money-matters. It really did. And then, besides--ah, my lady, you know that I would glory in the thought that I had given up all for you. You know, I think, that I would willingly work my fingers to the bone just that I might possess you always. So I had dreamed of love in a cottage--an idyl of blissful poverty, where Cupid contents himself with crusts and kisses, and mocks at the proverbial wolf on the doorstep. And I give you my word that until to-day I had not suspected how blindly selfish I have been! For poor old prosaic Rudolph is in the right, after all. Your delicate, tender beauty must not be dragged down to face the unlovely realities and petty deprivations and squalid makeshifts of such an existence as ours would be. True, I would glory in them--ah, luxury and riches mean little to me, my dear, and I can conceive of no greater happiness than to starve with you. But true love knows how to sacrifice itself. Your husband was right; it would not be fair to you, Patricia."

"You--you are going to leave me?"

"Yes; and I pray that I may be strong enough to relinquish you forever, because your welfare is more dear to me than my own happiness. No, I do not pretend that this is easy to do. But when my misery is earned by serving you I prize my misery." Charteris tried to smile. "What would you have? I love you," he said, simply.

"Ah, my dear!" she cried.

Musgrave's heart was sick within him as he heard the same notes in her voice that echoed in Anne's voice when she spoke of her husband. This was a new Patricia; her speech was low and gentle now, and her eyes held a light Rudolph Musgrave had not seen there for a long while.

"Ah, my dear, you are the n.o.blest man I have ever known; I wish we women could be like men. But, oh, Jack, Jack, don't be quixotic! I can't give you up, my dear--that would never be for my good. Think how unhappy I have been all these years; think how Rudolph is starving my soul! I want to be free, Jack; I want to live my own life,--for at least a month or so--"

Patricia shivered here. "But none of us is sure of living for a month.

You've shown me a glimpse of what life might be; don't let me sink back into the old, humdrum existence from a foolish sense of honor! I tell you, I should go mad! I mean to have my fling while I can get it. And I mean to have it with you, Jack--just you! I don't fear poverty. You could write some more wonderful books. I could work, too, Jack dear.

I--I could teach music--or take in washing--or something, anyway. Lots of women support themselves, you know. Oh, Jack, we would be so happy!

Don't be honorable and brave and disagreeable, Jack dear!"

For a moment Charteris was silent. The nostrils of his beak-like nose widened a little, and a curious look came into his face. He discovered something in the sand that interested him.

"After all," he demanded, slowly, "is it necessary--to go away--to be happy?"

"I don't understand." Her hand lifted from his arm; then quick remorse smote her, and it fluttered back, confidingly.

Charteris rose to his feet. "It is, doubtless, a very spectacular and very stirring performance to cast your cap over the wind-mill in the face of the world; but, after all, is it not a bit foolish, Patricia?

Lots of people manage these things--more quietly."

"Oh, Jack!" Patricia's face turned red, then white, and stiffened in a sort of sick terror. She was a frightened Columbine in stone. "I thought you cared for me--really, not--that way."

Patricia rose and spoke with composure. "I think I'll go back to the house, Mr. Charteris. It's a bit chilly here. You needn't bother to come."

Then Mr. Charteris laughed--a choking, sobbing laugh. He raised his hands impotently toward heaven. "And to think," he cried, "to think that a man may love a woman with his whole heart--with all that is best and n.o.blest in him--and she understand him so little!"

"I do not think I have misunderstood you," Patricia said, in a crisp voice. "Your proposition was very explicit. I--am sorry. I thought I had found one thing in the world which I would regret to leave--"

"And you really believed that I could sully the great love I bear you by stooping to--that! You really believed that I would sacrifice to you my home life, my honor, my prospects--all that a man can give--without testing the quality of your love! You did not know that I spoke to try you--you actually did not know! Eh, but yours is a light nature, Patricia! I do not reproach you, for you are only as your narrow Philistine life has made you. Yet I had hoped better things of you, Patricia. But you, who pretend to care for me, have leaped at your first opportunity to pain me--and, if it be any comfort to you, I confess you have pained me beyond words." And he sank down on the log, and buried his face in his hands.

She came to him--it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing and sobbing all in one breath--and knelt humbly by his side, and raised a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his.

"Forgive me!" she wailed; "oh, forgive me!"

"You have pained me beyond words, Patricia," he repeated. He was not angry--only sorrowful and very much hurt.

"Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!"

Mr. Charteris sighed. "But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia," he said. "I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much."