It took him nine weeks of joyless plodding, before he could put into her hands the completed manuscript. It was by no means a new emotion to be working under dread of the suspended lash. He could have wished with it all, that he had loved Patricia a little less. But this temporary clouding of their happiness was not her fault; an accidental blend of circumstances; he absolved her from all blame.
She started the book on the evening he yielded it to her; and read it through at top speed during the whole of the next day while he was not there, that she might not have to sit another evening with his dark pleading eyes fixed steadily upon her face, as she turned page after page.... She read with a beating hope that by this would be smothered an uprising suspicion that she had made a mistake; that her last idea had carried her above and beyond reality; that this man before whom she had chosen to sweep all her previous litter of trifles into a supreme consummation of fire, was not quite big enough—the altar not big enough for the offering.
Of course, he was a dear....
Gareth came home late ... and at dinner performed pretty and intricate little step-dances around the subject of which he most desired to speak. After dinner, in the library, he attempted to resume the step-dance, but Patricia straightway tripped him up.
"I've read it, Gareth."
"Oh?" casually.
She came and sat on the arm of his chair, slipped her arm about his shoulders, leant a soft cheek against his.... And he knew she had been disappointed.
"It's unequal; that's the worst that can be said about it. The first half is charming; your style hasn't got a blemish to it—and I'm a judge of style ... when it isn't my own!" She had made a slip here; she ought not to have referred to her writing; rather more hurriedly she went on: "And I especially love your detail work; all the quaint and whimsical passages; they remind me very much of Richard Pryce—do you know his stuff? The description of the harbour is delicious; and that wood in early spring; and the girl, Sheila. But——"
She paused. And Gareth, neither moving away from her light caress, nor responding to it, said dully: "Yes. Go on."
"But the whole treatment is not quite strong or vital enough to carry the central theme."