... The wraith of a girl who was pale and frail and slender, with eyes that were blue hyacinths drenched in rain; a girl whose thoughts were like silent places, and whose touch was as cool as the sand in a cave, hovered forlornly on the dim borderlands of nowhere-at-all, whither she had been rudely expelled by the intruder. Her look was a reproachful reminder to Gareth—"I was your dream."...
Pat O'Neill! How she had made the empty flat spaces throb with her presence. And she was a genius; had written that book—tumbled it forth out of sheer vitality of brain.... He was glad he had said: "I prefer Patricia"—it had given him the chance to speak her name aloud. She was a genius—at twenty-two.... Oh Heavens, twenty-two! And he almost double that age with not a single achievement he could produce to show to her—except, of course (with a pang of relief) his book....
His book. He had forgotten.
For an instant the old hatred was stirred, of the author who had anticipated him in his idea.... Surely, surely, Pat O'Neill might have hit on something else; might so easily have hit on something else. And thus they could each have published a masterpiece, and have met proudly on equal ground.... What a hypocritical cur he felt himself now, having lied to the girl Patricia....
His book.... "Ah well, the one is bound to knock out the other; and she was first in——"
When he got home that evening, the reader sat down and wrote for Leslie Campbell an enthusiastic report in praise of "The Reverse of the Medal." Then he took the manuscript from the bottom drawer of the desk, and tied it up in a parcel, preparatory to taking it the following morning to the office.
"And with that, my friend," bestowing a little twisted smile on the black china cat, "with that, goes any hope we may have had of being ourselves One of Them."
"Couldn't pull it through, eh?" jeered the cat.