"Please go and sit down," she said, moving restlessly. "I'm all right now. I—I want to talk and I can't talk like this." Again she smiled, and Bowen lifted her hand and kissed it gently. Rising he drew a chair near her and sat down.
"You see all this comes of trying to be a Mrs. Triggs," she said regretfully.
"Mrs. Triggs!" Bowen looked at her anxiously.
Slowly and a little wearily Patricia explained her conversation with Elton. "Didn't he tell you he had seen me?"
"No," replied Bowen, relieved at the explanation; "Godfrey is a perfect dome of silence on occasion."
"Why did you suddenly leave me all alone, Peter?" Patricia enquired presently. "I couldn't understand. It hurt me terribly. I didn't realise"—she paused—"oh, everything, until I heard you were going away. Oh, my dear!" she cried in a low voice, "be gentle with me. I'm all bruises."
Bowen bent across to her. "I'm a brute," he said, "but——"
She shook her head. "Not that sort," she said. "It's my pride I've bruised. I seem to have turned everything upside down. You'll have to be very gentle with me at first, please." She looked up at him with a flicker of a smile.
"Not only at first, dear, but always," said Bowen gently as he rose and seated himself beside her. "Patricia, when did you—care?" he blurted out the last word hurriedly.
"I don't know," she replied dreamily. "You see," she continued after a pause, "I've not been like other girls. Do you know, Peter," she looked up at him shyly, "you're the first man who has ever kissed me, except my father. Isn't it absurd?"