All this, serving only to prolong the agony. All this ... mess!... How she despised the sort of thing that a love-disappointment made out of its victim!
Was there then no cleaner way out of it all? No short cut through the fog? Patricia vowed that not Dacres nor any man was to be allowed to weight her buoyancy, bedraggle her white pride. Not for long, anyway. Already she was eager to regain her forfeited fleetness. Was there no short cut?—quick—now—while still she could think?—
And then, in the nick of time, Patricia was whirled up by one of her big ideas!
Suppose, literally, she were to face the matter out, instead of literally fleeing from it——(She had heard of girls, in such straits, who had immediately been dispatched on a lengthy sea-voyage.)... Suppose she were to consent to the week at Les Avants; consent of her own free will to be confronted by the daily hourly evidence of her loss: the perpetual presence of Dacres—loving someone else; renewal of the most intimate companionship, lacking that glow which lit it from behind as through a transparency. No possibility then, after that, of pitiful self-delusion that it was all a mistake, or that he would come back.
It would convince her. And, convincing her, set her free.
But it would irrevocably kill all the good they had enjoyed together. This hollow repetition of what had been once a ringing beautiful thing—it would blur and sully memory; forbid it altogether. Was it not a shame ... to kill a beautiful thing?
No ... and so much the better! To kill the past in order to clear the future. All the love he had given her, overlain by torment, stung and poisoned. With this one week as a thorn-barrier between her and the year gone by, she would never be able to linger for regretful sentiment. The horizon ahead was hers, at the expense of the backward look.
Only—could she go through with it? Go through with it, and not break down? Seven days of strain, incessant and unflinching.... Well, she would at least have her nights alone, if she wanted to ... cry.
Slowly the episode began to take on the hues of adventure; harsh sombre hues—but why need adventure of necessity be joyous? This sharp test to come was surely as much part of her adventure with Dacres as his arms gripping her and his mouth hard upon her eyelids....
Yes—yes—with a queer sense of being lifted high, higher, out of the ruts of thought, Patricia had a glimpse of adventure, true, and sonorous, and made complete by anguish to the verge of breaking-point. It was adventure itself, this dash into the fire for her liberty beyond....