"I don't know that I'm so keen on doing war-work, if we're not to do it together," he said; and he said it hating this evil humour she had thrust upon him; recurrent humour that when it came clung with leech-like obduracy on to his ashamed consciousness; spirit of idiotic perversity which caused him to represent himself in such a false light, to say such foolish untrue things. This mood that stuck and stuck——
"The German menace seems to present itself to you as a merry little dinner-party, to which we get our invitations in pairs!" Pat flicked at him.
"It's you, not I, who are scrambling for a seat. I shall look round quietly to see where I can be useful...."
"And in what direction did you think of exercising your talents?"—Yes, he should be made to own his loose helpless incompetence, even if it were ... a disgusting exhibition. For wavering before her mental vision was a bald newspaper announcement of five weeks ago:—Captain Dacres Upton—Died of Wounds. And now the pity of it smote her, as it had not done at the time.... Died of wounds—God! why did that sound in print as though it had been so terribly slow.... Within a week of the outbreak of war he had already been on the soil of Flanders; below it, within little more than a week. And Gareth had at last to meet with the inevitable comparison. He threw up a shield of desperate bravado:
"I don't see that I need confide my intentions to you. You told me nothing beforehand of this ambulance business of yours."
"But what do you mean to do, Gareth? Tell me. Say you start 'looking round quietly' to-morrow ... where will you go? To whom will you apply? I'm interested in the process."
She had thrown away all pretence, and was openly goading him.... He recognized the tone and the attitude—as he recognized the answering sullen lethargy they awakened in himself. In these dual positions he and Kathleen had hated one another during sixteen years. And from Kathleen he had rebounded to this younger and yet more vital Kathleen. He recognized her at last; and at the same hour as her final wrenching asunder of the man he was from the man he thought himself.
And Patricia realized suddenly that it was just as well she should be going away from him, and going at once. For she had found that in him which she could not forbear from tormenting ... again and again she would be forcing him to lay bare that stupid helpless twitching little nerve ... she knew now exactly where it cowered, beneath the deceptive layers of quiet strength and picturesque sadness ... and it tempted a certain cruelty foreign to her nature.... It was just as well she should be going away.
He sat hunched on the packing-case, head moodily supported between his hands. Over in the far corner, in noisy challenging fashion, she emptied the tin trunk of its contents....