They came back to Matocton almost silently. The spell of the dawn was
broken; it was honest, garish day now, and they were both hungry.
Patricia's spirits were rising, as a butterfly's might after a
thunderstorm. Since she had only a few months to live, she would at
least not waste them in squabbling. She would be conscientiously
agreeable to everybody.
"Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph!" she cooed, "if I had only known all along that
you loved me!"
"My dear," he protested, fondly, "it seemed such a matter of course." He
was a little tired, perhaps; the portmanteau seemed very heavy.
"A woman likes to be told--a woman likes to be told every day.
Otherwise, she forgets," Patricia murmured. Then her face grew tenderly
reproachful. "Ah, Rudolph, Rudolph, see what your carelessness and
neglect has nearly led to! It nearly led to my running away with a man
like--like that! It would have been all your fault, Rudolph, if I had.
You know it would have been, Rudolph."
And Patricia sighed once more, and then laughed and became magnanimous.
"Yes--yes, after all, you are the boy's father." She smiled up at him
kindly and indulgently. "I forgive you, Rudolph," said Patricia.
He must have shown that pardon from Patricia just now was not unflavored
with irony, for she continued, in another voice: "Who, after all, is the
one human being you love? You know that it's the boy, and just the boy
alone. I gave you that boy. You should remember that, I think--"
"I do remember it, Patricia--"
"I bore the child. I paid the price, not you," Patricia said, very
quiet. "No, I don't mean the price all women have to pay--" She paused
in their leisurely progress, and drew vague outlines in the roadway with
the ferrule of her umbrella before she looked up into Rudolph Musgrave's
face. She appraised it for a long while and quite as if her husband were
a stranger.
"Yes, I could make you very sorry for me, if I wanted to." Her thoughts
ran thus. "But what's the use? You could only become an interminable
nuisance in trying to soothe my dying hours. You have just obstinately
squatted around in Lichfield and devoted all your time to being
beautiful and good and mooning around women for I don't know how many
years. You make me tired, and I have half a mind to tell you so right
now. And there really is no earthly sense in attempting to explain
things to you. You have so got into the habit of being beautiful and
good that you are capable of quoting Scripture after I have finished.
Then I would assuredly box your jaws, because I don't yearn to be a poor
stricken dear and weep on anybody's bosom. And I don't particularly care
about your opinion of me, anyway."