There were natures that crumbled and went to pieces under distrust and failure—natures that allowed themselves to be blown by passion and self-pity until they burned down into charred heaps of humanity. She had met a few of them in her life; but—thank God!—there were only a few.
She found herself praying that she might not have come too late. Just what she would do or say she could not tell; but she must make him understand that he was not the arbiter of his own life, that in spite of what he had found, there were love and trust and disinterested kindness in the world, lots of it. Money might be a curse, but it was a curse that a man could raise for himself; and a little lad who could shovel snow for half a day to earn two white roses for a dead friend was too fine to be lost out of life’s credit-sheet.
She did not wait for any invitation; silently, with a white face, she climbed into the car and sat with hands folded about the pilgrim staff. It was as if she had taken him for granted and was waiting for his compliance to her will. And he understood. He moved the starter, and, as the motor began its chugging, he called out to the man in the doorway:
“Better not wait for me. I seem to have a date with—a lady.” There was an unpleasant intonation on the last word.
“Please take a quiet road—where there will not be much passing,” commanded Patsy.
She did not speak again until the town lay far behind and they were well on that quiet road. Then she turned partly toward him, her hands still clasped, and when she spoke it was still in the best of the king’s English—she had neither feeling nor desire for the intimacy of her own tongue.
“I know it must seem a bit odd to have me, a stranger, come to you this way. But when a man’s family and betrothed fail him—why, some one must—make it up—”
He turned fiercely. “How did you know that?”