But what a queer fatality of blindness that Gareth should not perceive the resemblance; that again he should be drawn and held and enchanted by the same personality that during sixteen years' intimacy had been goading him to madness.... If he were able to marry this girl, she would find him out soon enough; soon enough be up against that indefinable rottenness that Kathleen had named Atrophy of the Initiative. And this girl would not bear with it, any more than Kathleen had borne with it; but would contest it with all her vitality and passionate impatience ... and Gareth would hear again that driving note he so detested, from the lips he had newly kissed in love; and be hurt as he had not been hurt for years ... a great many years; because since he had ceased to love Kathleen, she had had to flog him harder and ever harder before she could produce any effect on his numbed spirit....
Where he cared once more, he could once more quiver to pain.
So would it not be a far subtler revenge, and far more poignant, to let him go to this girl ... and let him meet with his disillusion all over again?
Kathleen made her decision....
"I've changed my mind," she said abruptly to Patricia; "I do want my freedom. You can have Gareth—when you like."
Patricia drew her brows together, puzzled at this sudden yielding of obduracy.
"You mean you'll divorce him?"
"Not necessary, my dear. Gareth and I are not married."
... After a pause. "You seem astounded? And yet you remarked just now that you were ready enough to dispense with the ceremony yourself."
"Yes—I am ... but——This is 1913, and we're beginning to open our minds to the proposition of free love—monogamous free love, at least. But surely it was an unusual step, twenty years ago?"