Page:Restless Earth.djvu/32

She had spoken in a curiously flat, lifeless tone, without hesitation, as though she had learned the words by rote; but there had been that in her voice which told him that she had made her unalterable decision, that she was convinced of his guilt.

Resentment had surged in him, a resentment which he had striven to justify by the thought that he had unnecessarily sent Patricia from him for a month—a month of love probation.

“Do you realise what you are saying, Grace?” he had asked sharply, sitting up in bed and clasping his knees.

“Perfectly.”

“And what if I forbid you to go?”

“It will make no atom of difference, Jimmy.”

Her lifeless tone had given place to a rising passion; her eyes had glistened with brimming tears.

“We can’t go on living as we have been living lately, Jimmy. We can’t! We can’t! Don’t let us argue about it. I am going away. It is the only thing I can do for the sake of your happiness—and for mine. I have been a fool. I have thought you stronger than you are. I have been conceited enough to think that I held all the love of which you were capable. I have allowed you to run into temptation, believing that Pat remembered our old friendship and would respect my happiness———”

“She has remembered it, Grace. We shall see her no more for a month———”

“Am I to suffer another month such as this last, Jimmy? We? I shall never see her again! I am going away. What is a month, a year, of separation to either of you now? What is it but a period of mad longing which will make your inevitable reunion an event which will destroy all remembrance of our happiness together—an event which will make of me a cast-off mistress?”

“Grace!” he had protested vehemently, shocked to realise that the truth of her words at once exalted and shamed him.