And Mr. Scott. According to the conventions, as she had absorbed them through the sensationalised and distorted lens to which her intellectual vision had become habituated, the lover should lose all "respect" for the unfortunate girl, this being the first symptom of the waning of his love. Well, it wasn't working that way with her lover. The few, broken words of parting last night, the still passion of his letter, told a different story. Possibly, reflected Pat, the people who set forth what purported to be life, on screen, stage, and the printed page, didn't know so much about it after all. Or possibly she and Cary Scott were different from other people. She felt convinced that she was.
From this she fell to speculating upon Scott's probable attitude toward the ingenious and comforting theory of conduct and responsibility which she just had formulated specially to fit the present crisis. Somehow it did not seem quite satisfactory in the illumination of his imagined view. She had thought of him always and rather mournfully as a non-religious if not actually irreligious man; but it was disturbingly cast up from the depths of her mind that if Cary Scott had a God, he would never try either to make cheap excuses to nor shift responsibility upon Him. And suddenly in that light her exculpatory arguments seemed shallow and paltering. This uncomfortable consideration she thrust determinedly into the background, and concentrated her thought upon her next meeting with Scott.
All things considered, she was not, on the whole, sorry that he had gone away, assuming, of course, that he came back very soon. It gave her time to think, to figure things out free from the immediate glamour of his presence and the disturbing gladness of his return after the long disseverance. Did she really love him? She supposed she must; otherwise—— Yet there was still strong within her the impulse toward the companionship of youth which had inspired her petulant remonstrance to Dr. Bobs over his opinion as to the desirable age for her husband: "I don't want to marry my grandfather!" Would she marry Cary Scott if he were free? Even now she doubted it. Not at once, anyway. She wanted her own freedom for a time yet, freedom to enjoy life, to range, to pick and choose. But she had made her choice. Tradition would hold that she had taken an irrevocable step, committed herself. Tradition be damned! She didn't believe it. Would Cary take that view? If, on his return, he should assume the proprietary attitude, evince a sense of possessiveness—Pat clenched her fists but at once softened with the recollection of his sure comprehension, his unerring tact, his instinctive sense of her deeper emotions and reactions.
So far as the immediate future went, he was not free to marry her, nor likely to be. That problem need not be faced now. Suppose later she fell in love and wanted to marry someone else; what would be her course then? Oh, well! Let that take care of itself when it came. Meantime she had something more immediate to look forward to in Cary's return. She anticipated it with a mingling of trepidation, eagerness, warmth, and excited curiosity, the latter element being predominant.
On the following morning she had another letter, and still a third on the day after. She quite gloried in his devotion. But she did not answer the letters. She rather wanted to but found a difficulty in beginning. She preferred to plan out what she should say to him when they met again, and was in the act of building up a quite thrilling and eloquent statement of her feelings when the phone summoned her.
"Pat?" It was Dee's voice, queer and strained. "Can you come over at once?"
"Yes. What's happened?"
"Jim has been hurt."
"Jim? How?"
"Hit by a car."