Page:Restless Earth.djvu/42

“Mrs. Langham is right in one thing, Jimmy,” she countered. “You’ve let yourself go. You look half-starved———”

“Oh, hang Mrs. Langham!”

“—your clothes are creased in the wrong places—your hair is too long. You look gaunt and almost disreputable.”

He smiled.

“Merely following my own literary conception of how a man in my position should look, Pat.”

Patricia snatched her hands away and spoke sharply.

“Don’t play with me, Jimmy!” she cried. “I have suffered enough in this last month. Mrs. Langham is right. I should have remembered you as I saw you watching the train which took Grace away. You are breaking your heart for her.”

“For whom?” asked Harley, wilfully dense. “Mrs. Langham?”

“For Grace! Grace! Oh, I’ve been a beast, Jimmy. I have thought you wanted me. I’ve seen you suffering, and I’ve crowed while I’ve cried over you, Jimmy. I’ve been a conceited beast, Jimmy, and this serves me right. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to talk to you just once more. Now I’m going away for good. I’m leaving New Plymouth———”

She turned and moved away, and Harley overtook her in two swift strides. He seized her by the elbows as he had seized her a month previously.

“Pat, you’ve got it all wrong. Grace is never coming back. Everything between us is finished. I’ve written and told her so. Mrs. Langham is wrong once again. Grace is not the woman I have been breaking my heart for.”

She freed herself with a sudden movement and stamped her foot at him.

“No! No, Jimmy! You mustn’t do it. No man in his right senses would seriously prefer a woman like me to a woman like Grace. I’m hard, sophisticated, painted; and men say things of me—truly.