After a while Paul cleared his throat, but she did not hear him. And again he stood motionless, waiting and waiting. Finally, when she straightened up and began to mop her eyes, he said, trembling a little:
"Patricia!"
Instantly she stopped crying.
"Who is that?" she said, with an astonishing control of her voice. "Is that you, Alan? I'm all right, dear. Did I frighten you? Is that you, Alan?"
"It's Paul," the boy said, coming nearer.
"Oh—Paul!" she said, relieved. "Does Alan know I'm here?"
"No," he reassured her; then, affectionately: "What is it, Pat?"
"Just—just that I happen to be a fool!" she said huskily, but with an effort at lightness. Paul sat down, beginning to see in the darkness. "I'm all right now," went on Patricia, hardily. "I just—I suppose I just had the blues." She put out a smooth hand in the darkness, and patted Paul's appreciatively. "I'm ashamed of myself!" said she, catching a little sob, as she spoke, like a child.
"Bad news—in your letters?" he hazarded.
"No, GOOD; that's the trouble!" she said, with her whimsical smile, but with trembling lips. "You see, all my friends are in the East, and some of them happened to be at the same house-party at Newport, and they—they were saying how they missed me," her voice shook a little, "and—and it seems they toasted me, all standing, and—and—" And suddenly she gave up the fight for control, and began to cry bitterly again. "Oh, I'm so HOMESICK!" she sobbed, "and I'm so LONESOME! And I'm so sick, sick, sick of this place! Oh, I think I'll go crazy if I can't go home! I bear it and I BEAR it," said Patricia, in a sort of desperate self-defence, "and then the time comes when I simply CAN'T bear it!" And again she wept luxuriously, and Paul, in an agony of sympathy, patted her hand.