"Yes. I talked him over. I was older than he—four years older; and had the stronger will. Our respective families promptly cast us off, as might have been expected. And thus we embarked upon—the idyll of Pacific Villa. You see what it's made of us."
"And neither of you broke away? You dragged on—feeling like this?"
The melancholy in Kathleen's eyes deepened to bitterness.
"We had nothing tangible to break away from, except the necessity of keeping up an illusion that it was all divine.... And you try breaking away from that! It's like a tough sticky web ... an invisible web—I'd sooner have steel chains to smash. Break away?—when already you are free, except for voluntary propinquity.... My dear child, you are very beautiful and immensely wise—but you don't know what you're talking about. I couldn't budge, because I had talked Gareth into the situation, and had to keep up a feverish pretence that it was all right—all right—quite different to the usual dreary matrimonial failure; bound to be different, because we weren't married. For my vindication in his eyes, in my own eyes, for my pride's sake, I had to keep up the strain.... And besides, I dared not own that our life was exactly, down to its hatefullest detail of a burst boiler on a winter's day, what I had so dreaded——"
Patricia broke in impetuously. "And Gareth would not break away for fear you might think it was because he held you in any less esteem than if he had married you. That was like Gareth——"
"Hm. Always ready with a pretty picture to justify him, aren't you?"
"And you're always ready with a taunt to ridicule him. It would be vain to pretend I'm violently astonished the household wasn't all harmony, Mrs. Temple——"
"My name is Morrison. I've anticipated your future title long enough, Miss O'Neill.... More crimson blushes? That's an incongruous charm of yours, considering how extremely modern you are in all else."
"Yes, isn't it? Quite old-world, one might say!" Unabashed, Patricia rose to go. "Good-bye. I won't say that we've had such a delightful chat and when are we to have another?—for I take it that this interview is for one performance only. But—wish me luck, won't you? Just because you're the last person in the world from whom I ought to be begging good wishes." She held out her hand; Kathleen took it.
"Certainly I wish you luck," stolidly and without hesitation. Then with an almost witch-like lilt of voice and twist of the lip, she spoke again. "I leave Gareth to you with the completest confidence."