If Patricia had been a religious woman, especially if she had been a Roman Catholic, her natural refuge in such a crisis would have been the priest. But Patricia—though she paid the customary lip-service of her caste in Arlsfield Church—regarded her God as she regarded her King. Both were symbols: the one a symbol of conduct, the other a symbol of country. As symbols one owed loyalty to both; but individually neither could be of the slightest assistance. Every normal human being, argued Patricia, must fight its way through the world unaided....

Hitherto, her own battles had been purely personal: the fights of reason (a sensible General) against instincts (a horde of hare-brained savages); and hitherto—except for one lapse, falling in love with her own husband—reason had always triumphed. Reason must triumph again; only Reason—not instinct—could save Peter....

Having thus persuaded herself, as the drunkard persuades himself of his perfect sobriety, that her passion for Peter would soon be a thing of the past, Patricia took a lonely walk, tried to sum up her problems.

First and foremost of these was to carry out her father’s instructions: to make Peter confess; break down the wall of reticent commonplaces which he had built up against her. How? She remembered her father’s words, “Make love to him as if you were his mistress!” The words themselves conveyed nothing whatever to a woman utterly unversed in the wiles of sex; but they filled her with a delicious feeling of fright. For a moment, the idea of being Peter’s “mistress” completely routed that calculating General, Reason....

This “bed-room thought,” as Patricia phrased it, was so disturbing that reason took refuge among its minor problems. Peter’s leave had still ten weeks to run; long before it ended, she would find some way of gaining his confidence.

Meanwhile, the home, Peter’s home, demanded immediate attention. She really must get rid of Fry, Fry came later and later of a morning, left earlier and earlier of an evening, Fry overfed the animals, Fry hadn’t yet finished his seed-potato-sorting. ... Thought became gloriously inconsecutive.... One oughtn’t to keep three servants. The children would have to go to school. The Lowndes Square purchase money wouldn’t last for ever. It was very good of Peter to have given her the Lowndes Square money. Peter always had been very good to her....

By this time, she had circled Arlsfield Village, was beyond the Post Office. In front of her, the boundary road of Arlsfield Hall serpentined under leafless chestnuts. Still lost in thought, Patricia wandered on.

Peter’s mistress! Why mistress? What did a mistress give that wife couldn’t? Ridiculous! She smiled to herself. Give! What couldn’t she give to a man if only...

There are certain moments in the life of every woman, when the sex-antagonism disappears and she realizes the sex-necessity. Such a moment came to Patricia as she tramped sturdily along the leaf-sodden road that late-December afternoon of nineteen hundred and sixteen.

Hitherto, she had been content to regard the sex-intimacies as rather shameful necessities of married life. The man desired; the woman gave way to his desires. Her own desires, the secret pleasure she sometimes experienced in giving way to him, were of those savage hordes, the instincts, which Reason—very reasonably—did its utmost to suppress: Bedroom thoughts, in fact.

Bedroom thoughts! Suddenly she saw the absurdity of the phrase. If love meant anything at all, it meant mutuality; and mutuality could not exclude sex-instinct. Why should woman be ashamed of her desires? Bedroom thoughts—indeed. Absurd mock-modesty! Rubbish! Stuff and Nonsense! Early Victorianism at its soppiest extreme! ...

And the woman of thirty tramped on. It was her moment of matehood: in that moment, she forgot her two children, her reduced income, her husband’s illness; realized nothing except this new and to her amazing truth—that the sex-need was mutual.

There came over her a great mood of clairvoyance. The word “mistress” no longer puzzled, no longer frightened. By her love, she interpreted the meaning of it: by her love, she saw the sex-thing whole. It sufficed not that a wife surrendered her body grudgingly, even though she became her husband’s pal, his childbearer, the manager of his home and the partner of his income. Marriage, to be perfect, required more than these. They twain must be one flesh, one in mutual desire as they were one in mutual interest. And in clean desire, love sanctifying, could be no shame.

Matehood-moment still on her, Patricia rounded the last bend of the road; sighted the mellow straggling roof of Francis Gordon’s cottage above the leafless elder-hedges.

Francis! In the light of her new vision, the man no longer seemed despicable. Broken, foolishly ashamed of physical infirmity, irresolute, unwilling or unable to work—one thing, at least, he kept sacred. “Living like a monk!” Her father’s words held the semblance of a sneer; but she, Patricia, understood.

And for the first time, understanding him, she respected this man. Intuition gave her the sure clue to his mind: like herself, Francis Gordon had climbed the pinnacles, seen the sex-thing whole. As to her, so to Francis Gordon, Love had vouchsafed the inner meanings; and now, he could accept no substitute for Love. Either the one woman,—pal and childbearer, partner and mistress; or this, the lonely cottage among the lonely woods....

But intuition gave Patricia no clue to the heart of the problem, to the man’s renunciation. Blind to everything except her own immediate feelings, she saw only this straggling cottage which might have been a home—this house without its woman. A girl in America! In her ignorance, Patricia hated “that girl.” That girl must know Francis loved her. She corresponded with him; sent him post-cards when he didn’t write regularly. Then why didn’t she marry him? Obviously, because “that girl” was a flirt, a light woman, unworthy of love....

By the time she reached the low flint-wall which divided Glen Cottage from the main-road, Patricia had worked herself up into a fine state of resolution. She would talk to Francis; warn him against “that girl” who was ruining his life, warn him against himself....

But, unfortunately for resolution, Francis Gordon was out.

Prout, standing in the gabled doorway, told her that “Mister Peter had come for Mister Francis, and they’d gone up to Sunflowers.”

Patricia paused for one irresolute moment. Then she said, “Do you think you could get me a cup of tea, Prout, I’m feeling rather tired?”

“Certainly, Madam. Where will you have it, Madam? In the writing-room?”

“Yes, Prout. That will do nicely.”

She laid down stick and gauntlets; passed through the sombre oak-panelled hall-way, up the broad shallow staircase, into the long room above. “Here,” thought Patricia, “he ought to be writing.” She looked at the great desk under the window, across it to the swelling turf of Arlsfield Park: she looked at the cushioned settle by the writing-desk, at the fire in the Morgan-tiled grate, at the black-lacquer chairs, at the low bookshelves against the cream-distempered walls, at the Écru velvet curtains, the maroon carpet on the floor. Then she walked deliberately to the desk; picked up Beatrice’s photograph.

“A fine face,” thought Patricia, “a good face.”

Prout, entering with the tea-tray, caught her in the act: she stood there, guiltily, frame in her hand; and the little gray-haired valet in the scrupulously brushed blue clothes stared at her over the rim of his high white collar. He, too, had fingered that photograph-frame; peered not once, but a hundred times, into those clear thoughtful eyes....

Prout drew a little table from its corner by the fireplace, set down his tea-tray, arranged a chair. Patricia put back the photograph.

“Your tea, Madam,” said Prout; but he made no move to go.

“Prout,” began Patricia—and stopped as though she had accosted a stranger by mistake.

“Yes, Madam?” There was invitation in the valet’s voice.

Still, Patricia hesitated.

“You were going to ask, Madam?”

She plunged in headlong, “Prout, who is that girl?”

“That, Madam, is Miss Cochrane’s photograph”—the old man spoke slowly—“and, if I may be allowed to say so, Madam, it’s a great pity Mister Francis ever met her.”

“Why?” Patricia hated herself for asking the question: it meant the breaking-down of barriers, made her the old man’s accomplice. But Prout seemed to take no notice; his voice lost no accent of respect.

“Because, Madam, if it hadn’t been for Miss Cochrane, he might have had a chance. What chance has he got now?” The respectful voice rose. “No chance, Madam.”

There fell a silence between these two: rules of conduct, honoured for generations, kept both tongue-tied. Patricia looked at her tea-cup, but made no attempt to drink from it: the valet stood stock still, as though awaiting an order. In the game of etiquette, it was the woman’s move.

“Tell me more about her,” said Patricia at last.

Etiquette went by the board; the valet turned suddenly man, an old man who spoke broken-heartedly about a boy he loved.

“Mrs. Jameson, she was the woman for him. I knew it the moment they met. We were on board a steamer, travelling from the Argentine to the West Indies. And I thought, I thought....”

“Yes, Prout. You thought....”

“I thought she was going to make him happy.... Look at him now, Mrs. Jameson. A broken man! Look at his life. Is it life? It isn’t life, Mrs. Jameson. It’s just death. And all”—he shook his hand at the photograph on the writing-table—“all because of one wretched woman who isn’t fit to polish his boots. I polish his boots, Mrs. Jameson; I run this house for him; I do my best to make him happy. I’d work my fingers to the bone for him. Why? Not for the few shillings a week he gives me—I haven’t been in service forty years for nothing, Mrs. Jameson—but because ... because I’m fond of him. Is she fond of him? Would she let him eat out his heart for her if she was fond of him? If she was fond of him, why didn’t she marry him then? Why doesn’t she marry him now? Write, write, write! Three years she’s been writing to him. And every time one of her letters comes, it makes him worse. Why doesn’t she stop writing to him? If she doesn’t want him, why can’t she leave him alone? Why can’t she leave him alone, Mrs. Jameson?”

The man stopped speaking: the valet went on, “Many’s the time I’ve thought of writing to her myself, Madam. But I’ve served the Gordons—father and son—for over twenty years. And I know my place, Madam.”

“And what would you have said in your letter, Prout?” Patricia asked the question almost automatically.

“I should have told Miss Cochrane the truth, Madam.” ... The door closed silently. Patricia found herself alone.

A moment, she hesitated. The whole business seemed suddenly fantastic, out of its century. Men no longer died for love of one woman. Francis would get over this infatuation, recover his vitality, his joy of life. She could not do this thing. She, like Prout, “knew her place.”

Then, for the mood of matehood was still strong in her, Patricia rose slowly from her chair; walked towards the desk. Again, she picked up the photograph, gazed into the eyes of it. The eyes seemed to ask a question, a matehood question. “Tell me,” the eyes seemed to say, “tell me. I too, can give....”

“What harm can it do?” thought Patricia. Her free hand, resting on a mass of papers, encountered something hard, something hard and flat. She put down the photograph; turned over the papers.... The Browning pistol lay at full cock, blue-black on the black wood of the desk; and she knew instinctively that Francis, disturbed at Peter’s entrance, must have turned the papers to hide it....

Now, Patricia hesitated no longer. His pen, the pen she had given him, was lying in a little lacquer pen-tray—her gift too. She picked it out; unscrewed the mechanism; sat down to the desk; drew a sheet of note-paper from its rack; and wrote, wrote for the life of a man....

Her quick movements shook the desk-top; till the pistol beside her quivered. It quivered to her hand as she wrote. She could not keep her eyes away from the pistol....

“Francis has probably told you about me. I am his cousin’s wife—his cousin Peter’s wife. He does not know I am writing to you—he has never told me or any one about you. I am writing this in his house—he is not here. I don’t quite know what to say to you. I can only tell you that he needs you very desperately. If you love him you ought to come to him. I don’t know if you love him or if you can come to him—but I do know that it is a question of life or death for Francis.” ...

She signed her name and address legibly at foot of the letter; rose with it in her hand; walked to the fireplace; dried the single sheet at the flame. Again, the whole affair seemed fantastic. She wanted to throw the letter on the fire: till, looking over her shoulder, she saw the pistol, black and menacing on the desk-top.

She rang the bell; walked back to the writing-desk; found an envelope, folded the sheet; sealed it up.

“You rang for me, Madam,” said Prout, appearing silently in the doorway.

“Yes.” She handed him the closed envelope. “You know Miss Cochrane’s address, I suppose.”

“Yes, Madam”—obviously, the valet wanted to thank her, to ask questions. He began to stammer something; but Patricia cut him short.

“Have it registered, please: and, Prout”—her eyes flickered to the pistol on the writing-desk—“I thought you said you were fond of him!”

She was out of the room and down the stairs before the old man could answer. He heard the rattle of her stick, the clang of front door closing, as he stood by the window, pistol grasped gingerly in one hand, unaddressed letter in the other. “I ought to have seen her out,” thought the valet. “I ought to have seen her out.”