“Oh, Pat—my lady . . . could you bear it?”
His voice was shaking: his eyes, the eyes of a man looking into the promised land.
“I couldn’t bear anything else,” said Patricia Bohun.
“No cars, no servants, no clothes——”
“No cares,” said Patricia tremulously. “I’m getting all excited. Besides, I’ve had my whack. And——”
“But, Pat, think. We’ll be beggars. With that ten thousand behind us we might have put up a show, but——”
“You only wanted it, dear, to spend upon me. And now—you’ve had your wish. Besides, I don’t care a damn. I want to be poor. . . . But, Simon dear, how like you to turn that money down! When he offered to give it back. Only a giant could have done a thing like that. But, then, you are a giant.”
“My dear,” said Simon, “I’m the weakest——”
“You’re not weak at all,” said Patricia. “Neither am I. We’ve played a splendid game. It happened to be the wrong one, but we were so mad to play it that we never saw that. . . . We’re a couple of shorn lambs, Simon—and that’s the truth. We sheared each other that dreadful night at Breathless—and went out into the cold. I was a fool, and you who knew better—you wouldn’t open my eyes. And then the wind blew—a wind like a knife. . . . That was to cure us of our folly. And now the good God has tempered the wind. . . .”
“That’s right,” said Simon slowly. “You’ve driven the nail, Pat. We put up a show all right, but we were trying to play an impossible game. It was when I realized that that I decided to put the money on. I didn’t know how you felt, but I wanted to have it ready—in case you moved.”