“I’m afraid so, dear.”
They walked on.
“Failure again!” he commented bitterly.
Now, she was loving him madly, reasonlessly. And she couldn’t help him. He had gone back beyond her reach, into the old world: the world of denied accomplishment.
“Failure,” he repeated.
“It isn’t.” Her eyes lit. “It isn’t. It’s splendid. To give up something you really loved for the sake of your country—that can’t be failure.”
“Oh, the country. . . .” The word was almost a sneer. This man’s patriotism lay deep down in his nature, a thing of whispers and suggestions, a thing to die for but not to discuss.
“The country!” he went on. “ ‘We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go’. . . . And once you have gone, we’ll take devilish good care to snaffle anything you’ve left behind you.”
“You don’t mean a word you’re saying.” The hostility in her tone caught his ear. In eight years, they had never quarrelled. This Patricia was as new to her husband as to herself. He walked on in silence.
“You could resign your commission, I suppose?” She said it purposely, meaning to provoke him.