“When I have said a thing, I have said it. I will not marry you, because I hate you.”
“Now you are merely absurd. Why do you hate me?”
“Because I cannot forget the past.”
He gave an impatient gesture. “Heroics! Heroics!—you were never hurt. I tell you it is a spectre, and you ought to have the sense to slay it. Instead, you enlarge on it—positively drape it in visionary attributes, and offer yourself as a sort of burnt offering to it. You ought to have lived a few hundred years ago. By Gad! Paddy, you’d have made a fine Joan of Arc!” and he laughed with a touch of bitterness.
Paddy stared at the loch and remained silent.
“Patricia the Great at the head of an avenging army—leading on fools and knights-errant—devastating a peaceful, harmless land for the sake of a Dream—a Prejudice—a Chimera. I see it all.”
She looked helplessly unhappy, but he would not spare her.
“Listen to me, Patricia the Great. You shall keep your feud, and cling to your prejudice a little longer, but I will not give in. I want you. That at least is a plain, ungarnished truth. Perhaps if you knew me as well as some, you would realise that it is the sort of truth I have a little habit of making into a fact, in spite of dreams and prejudices. This thing has got to be, Paddy. I repeat what I said before. If I am worth my name, I will win you yet.”
“Ah, why will you talk like this, when it is so useless,” she cried. “Why will you not be friends? Lawrence, let us be friends. Let me thank you for the other night, and, for the sake of it, drop the old feud. I will try to do this to show you I am sincere in my gratitude.”
His face grew suddenly whiter than ever with concentrated passion and determination. “We will do nothing of the kind. I don’t want your friendship. You can take it back. Do you hear? I refuse your kindly pat on the shoulder, and your offer to be a good girl because you think you owe me thanks. You can keep your feud and your hatred—anything is better than a soppy middle course. It is my turn now, and I refuse your offer of sisterly affection, which is what it amounts to. I will have your love some day, but until then, your hate, please. As long as you go on hating I shall know at least that you are not indifferent, and that the sound of my name does not pass unheeded by your ears. And we will continue to cross swords—we will be as we were before. If you want to show this gratitude you talk of, show it that way; it is the only thing I ask of you.”