"I love you, Patricia." He did not seek to touch her, nor even to draw nearer. At any moment she might pronounce sentence. He felt her mind unfathomably concentrated on some purpose behind speech.
After a pause, she said in quite altered tones: "Which is the exact theme of my book which poached on yours?"
"I never said you poached; of course you didn't—any more than I. But I'm curious to know how and under what circumstances you were inspired by the duplicate theme.... It was adventure completed by pain—especially the adventure of a man and a woman. "The Round Adventure" was the title of my novel. And both our heroes carried about a secret fear, and recognized this fear to be part of the fun. And both died by it—deliberately. You stumble across that sort of truth by what you didn't do yourself; at least, that was the way with me ... the shadow-side of the circle, as well as the other ... if you shirk it, you're never free—never free again."
She repeated musingly: "Never free again. You earn that sort of truth by what you did screw yourself up to do—at least, that was the way with me."
"And then you wrote a book about it. Because you had always wanted to write?"
"Not a bit of it! Just because I had an abstract discovery on my hands and wanted to get rid of it in some tangible form. It worries me when things lie about untidily and are wasted. I grant you it was quite exciting to discover I had a talent in my napkin."
Gareth asked, jealously, who was the prototype of Robert Nugent. And she favoured him with that smile at once tantalizing and enigmatic which the best of girls cannot refrain from using on one male when speaking to him of another.
"He was a dashing cavalry captain, and he treated me badly. Have I never struck you as a sorrowful victim to a man's perfidy?"
"You didn't care for him," infinitely relieved; "or you wouldn't make a joke of it."
She laughed. "I've paid my toll, and I'm free as air. It was a full two years ago—a long and wearisome tale. Do you want to hear it? Dying to, aren't you? And you're being so delightfully shocked at my bright and breezy allusions.... Own up! it would have cheered you considerably if I'd gone off into a highly respectable decline. I'll start my narrative directly you unhook that attentive funeral expression—it embarrasses me to such an extent that I shall shortly break into bitter sobs...."