She had gone from him then with scorn and anger in her words, and with scorn and defiance in her heart; she met him now with cold and indifferent hauteur, amounting almost to insolence.
Philip had stood for a long time alone beside the marble boy Narcissus, revolving moodily the sharp home truths she had thrust upon him. He did not forget one curl of her lip, one flash of her eyes, one inflection of her clear voice, as she flung back the love he offered; flung it back with bitter disdain and contempt. And yet, curiously enough, he was not angry with her; there was no such positive element in his feelings as that; he seemed to himself to hold, as it were, an outsider's position, and to look on and judge her from an outsider's point of view.
Was it her own complete indifferentism, her absolute disbelief in the ordinary delusions of life, her cynical acceptance of the contradictions of destiny, together with her sudden outburst of passionate derision, that had produced in him this state of cool analysis and judicial judgment?
He had pleaded his love fervently enough under the glamour of the moonlight and her loveliness, and he had meant what he said then; he would gladly have taken her in his arms, and given his answer to her letter in a fond and foolish lover's way; but—and here lay the difficulty—she must return to him as she had gone from him, the same yielding, loving, believing, if wilful Patty; he could accept no other; no new Patricia, no woman whose eyes spoke of the fires of conflict, whose face had that written upon it which tells of the lower depths of mental pain and struggle.
For Philip, as we know, was above all things, masterful, and his idea of dual happiness was autocratic rather than constitutional; he would share no divided throne and sceptre, even with the woman of his heart; he must reign, and he alone, and she must be the empire over which he ruled unquestioningly.
All this had been in his heart, though unspoken, when he pleaded with her to return to their old relations, and, unconsciously, perhaps, there was an echo of his despotism even in his tenderest words. However that may have been, Patricia would have none of it. She was not to be won by pity when passion had failed.
And so it was that as she stood tall and beautiful before him, with her rich white draperies clinging about her in sensuous lines and curves, her face pale with suppressed emotion, her eyes dark with endurance, she tossed back his proffered gift, his reawakened love—a love that would share no rights and no prerogatives—and, with the fine irony of a woman who sees her advantage and presses it, thrust back and away from her all appeal from out the past, touched though it was with the pure gold of that time when love and youth, belief and trust, went hand in hand together.
Even yet, then, after ten long years of experience and knowledge, Philip could not read her heart aright. And she, should she forgive him? Give up the unequal game, lay down her arms, acknowledge herself vanquished, and creep timidly back into his embrace, repentant and abject, meek and thankful?
Then she looked at Philip's face, calm and quiet and victorious, with just a touch of wearied assurance in its smile, and her heart leapt up again in sudden protest and passion. No, she would not yield, she would never yield until she saw him suffering, through a woman, some portion of the pain and humiliation he had inflicted upon her. Then, when expiation brought forth the fruit of atonement, why then—ah, then Miss Hildreth would reconsider.
It was Miss Rosalie James who first introduced the canker of doubt in Philip's mind concerning Patricia, of suspicion regarding her past.