Patricia started at the tone, at the discovery. The tears came to her eyes. She felt she had no use at all for such false contrition as he was prepared to display. It was not forgiveness Monty desired. He was deliberately pandering to a mentality which his sensual cynicism led him to despise. Having, apparently, no belief in purity in women, he was prepared elaborately to connive at its cunning or hysterical assumption and to submit to its merely formal placation. He was the diplomat, playing a familiar game, bargaining with vanity; not a penitent. And to Patricia such insolent flattery was more offensive than a brazen making-light of the episode would have been.
"Don't talk like that, Monty," she begged. "It isn't forgiveness you need; and you know it. I can't talk about forgiving. Surely you see that."
"I want you to believe that in asking you here—" began Monty, cajolingly, still with that cringing air which masked watchfulness for any sign of emotion or relenting.
Patricia laughed—uncontrollably.
"Oh, Monty!" she exclaimed; and there were still tears in her voice at the knowledge that he held her to be simply a common piece of woman's flesh, to be won still, so long as he sacrificed to her false delicacy, assumed, perhaps, for the sake of bargaining.
"It's true," he persisted, with more energy. Patricia turned aside, weary of the encounter, sickened at his cynical insincerity.
"I've told you I don't want to talk about forgiveness," she said. "I couldn't forgive you, because there's no question of that. It's myself that I can't forgive. It was idiotic of me to try and play a game I'm not fitted for, and I'm ashamed of myself. Isn't that enough?"
"Then you'll come again?" he questioned, as if puzzled.
"No," she said. "I've had my lesson. I've been silly and wicked; but you've been worse. And you're still being worse, you know. You're under-rating me. You think I'm pretending. You think you've only got to flatter me to find I'm no better than ... the rest—I suppose." She shrugged. "I'm not pretending. I'm going."