"Gareth, call me a shrew and a harridan, but I insist that you should unhand me this very instant, and retire to the library for an evening of diligent inspiration. Your slothful aspect is a great grief to me; it is, truly."
"Adorable, I'm not in the mood to-night."
"Oh dear—enter the artistic temperament! Would it start the mood, do you suppose, if I were to prepare you a cup of cocoa beaten up with white of egg and a drop of rum—or some such invigorating cordial?"
"God forbid! You're an invigorating cordial all by yourself. What I need is a soothing syrup." "Man—man—and I putting all my soul into an effort to be a Good Wife to you!"
He suggested, with a whimsical glance around the room, that she might put a little of that same soul into an effort to make a bright and cosy home for a fellow returning tired and dispirited from his day's toil....
"Yes?" submissively. "I foresee already that I'm to be heavily lectured. What, may I ask, is wrong with the brightness and cosiness of seventeen Blenheim Terrace?"
He frowned in an attempt to explain what had been dimly perceptible to him from the first: that Patricia lacked that indefinable something which might have given to her surroundings that likewise indefinable something....
"Quite," said Patricia. "He expresses himself with such remarkable coherence and style, that I am moved to rescue him from these flounderings. You had pictured me straying about from room to room, with a song upon my lips; achieving with a deft hand a sort of—of draped charm. Isn't that it?... Here and there looping things ... here and there a flower or two ... me in a white gown. Have I given speech to your silent longings?"
She had; and so truly that he could not refrain from laughter, though he was slightly annoyed as well.
"Burlesque it or not," he said; "but there is such a thing as working one's personality into a room, till it becomes beautiful. And you know it as well as I, because I felt just this in your own sitting-room at Sydenham. A sort of rhythm and colour which was—you."