"I'm not so sure they aren't right about this man-and-woman thing," declared Pat recklessly. In so speaking she felt that she had broken with conventionalities far more than in anything, however bold, previously enunciated in their talk.
Monty's square jaw became ugly. "I'm giving you your chance. You won't tell me the man's name?"
Pat preserved the silence of obstinacy. It was more convincing than any negative. Also more exasperating.
"Good-night!" bellowed her lover, and strode from the room.
Almost immediately he was back, endued with a sad and noble expression. "Nobody shall ever know about this from me, Pat. You're safe."
For three nights Pat washed her troubled soul with tears. Her family knew that there had been a lovers' quarrel; that was all. Pat waited for Monty to break the engagement formally or send her word that he wished her to break it. Through all her grief of bereavement which, she repeatedly told herself, was the most sorrowful depth that her life had yet touched, that any life could touch, she impatiently awaited the definite solution. Relief from the strain of uncertainty; that was what she craved.
On the fourth evening Monty reappeared. All his nobleness was gone. He was haggard, nerve-racked, forlorn. He threw himself upon her compassion. He implored her. He would forgive everything; he would forget everything; he would make no conditions, if only she would take him back. Life without her——
"All right, Monty-boy," said Pat, really affected by his suffering. "I haven't changed. I love you, Monty. But if ever you let what I've told you make any difference, if ever you speak of it or let me know that you even think of it, I'm through. That minute and forever."
Humbly, abjectly, the upholder of man's superior privilege accepted the absurd condition. The stronger nature had completely dominated the weaker.
Back in his arms again, Pat savoured the delicious warmth of a passion the more ardent for the threat of frustration; the triumph of a crisis valorously met and successfully passed. But an encroaching thought tainted the rapture of the moment. What was it that he himself had so confidently said to Selden Thorpe? Was her splendid and beautiful young lover, holding the views which he had proclaimed and surrendering them so readily, indeed "a poor sort of fish"?