... Gareth looked too long into the shallow eyes of the black china cat....
"Pat O'Neill must pay for pitching on the same idea as mine," he said at last, slowly. And slowly gathered up the scattered manuscript, sheet by sheet. Slowly crossed to the desk, and opened the lowest drawer, and thrust in the untidy parcel; crushed it down, and shut the drawer, and locked it.
When he mounted the creaking stairway to the room he shared with Kathleen, there were ugly lines around his mouth, a hard glitter in his eyes. And he was vexed to see her smiling in her sleep.
CHAPTER VII
The lantern was out, that had burnt in the heart of the world.
Gareth was quite defenceless in face of this smashing thing which had occurred to him. He had no philosophy or religion to which to cling; no inner store of strength and pride. Nor was there any person to whom blindly he could turn, and say: "Help me!" He had not even the vicious satisfaction of feeling that his present misery was due payment for something tangible which had been his to enjoy; nothing had been his but moonshine, and moonshine is but poor stuff to feed on in retrospect.
Gareth, who had been hurt, looked about for somebody to hurt.
Kathleen's unnatural and feverish excitement, the prevailing atmosphere about her of impending happenings, stabbed him with a sense of unbearable injury. For sixteen years they had been unhappy together, he and she; since two and a half months, found each their separate happiness. And now his had evaporated—and hers remained. More, was obviously reaching its consummation.
Gareth had always been possessed of an instinctive understanding where Kathleen was concerned. Now he marked her sudden tremulous smiles; her abstracted moods, in which trivial mishaps mattered not at all; the state of mind in which she woke of a morning to a day which meant something, brought something nearer. All these tokens of an earth beatified, maddened him with the memory of his loss. Once, like a very human child, he cried out to whosoever was responsible: "If you could only have left me mine, I would have wanted everyone to have theirs as well!" and then Kathleen hummed a little tune as she came in from an evening stroll; and Gareth said without looking up, "Where have you been?"
She lied carelessly. Went on lying, as he continued to question. The fact that she did not even labour to evolve a credible tissue of falsehood, that the web was full of holes and gaps whence any intelligent man might with ease tear the fabric to shreds, infuriated him more than anything else could have done; convinced him more than anything else how little he counted in her, in other people's eyes. "We needn't bother about Gareth. Gareth was always a weak fool!" ... he could hear Kathleen's scornful intonation, see Napier's flashing smile in response. And "Campbell's Young Men" caught up the tone and the laugh; till the world was one cruel casual voice that repeated "We needn't bother about Gareth."...