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."

Aloud she said: "Oh, well! let's go and get some breakfast."