"I appreciate your magnanimity. Especially as you've obtained what you wanted from me."
"You have a pretty gift for repartee, haven't you?"
Kathleen went to the door, and gave an order to Maggie. "What a tragedy for Gareth to have had to live with it for sixteen years ... is that what you were thinking?"
It was. And Patricia owned it cheerfully; thanking her stars the while that she had this woman to cope with, and not a tearful bit of helplessness, who would have pleaded: "Don't take him away—don't—he's all I've got...."
She was curious to hear more of the long-drawn-out liaison which had proved such a failure. "How did you first meet, you and Gareth?" as her hostess poured out the tea which had just been brought in, and tendered the thick bread-and-butter. These were curious circumstances for a friendly meal ... and as their eyes met, each gave the other reassurance as to her own appreciation of the existing blend of humour and irony.
"Where did we meet? Oh, accidentally, on a summer holiday. I was a teacher, shepherding a flock of chattering schoolgirls. He was a good young man, seeing life with a band of touring botanists. We ran away from our respective responsibilities, and enjoyed a most delightful month at a mountain village called Alpenruh—do you know it? No? Perhaps Gareth will take you there for your honeymoon.... It was an entirely platonic affair, and it should have ended as such. But when we got back to London, our horrified families seemed to expect Gareth to repair the wrong he hadn't done me—and he went to pieces before their attitude. One day he came galloping up to me on a metaphorical charger, insisting that I should marry him...."
The organ outside effected an uneasy gulping transition from one tune into another.... And absent-mindedly Kathleen refilled Patricia's cup, as she brooded over that scene in Nelly Morrison's dining-room.... Nicholas's toys bestrewing the floor—old Mr. Jeyne asleep in the corner—Nelly ostentatiously removing the children, to give her sister-in-law a chance.
And Patricia too was seeing a vision—a serious young knight, incredibly handsome, with his liquid dark eyes and waving black hair, setting forth on his quest for right.... She wished she had known Gareth in those days; how tenderly she could have loved his rapt boyish ideals.
This Kathleen—she was like an eternal east wind; stimulating to those who liked the chill and the nip of it—Patricia did, for one—but deadly suffering to a nature unpractical and romantic, like Gareth's.
"You refused to marry him?"