asted
with him, and had insisted on driving to the station with him. It was a
trivial-seeming fact, but, perhaps, not unworthy of notice, that
Patricia was carrying her own portmanteau, as well as an umbrella.

The three faced one another in the cool twilight. The woods stirred
lazily about them. The birds were singing on a wager now.

"Ah," said Colonel Musgrave, "so you have come at last. I have been
expecting you for some time."

Patricia dropped her portmanteau, sullenly. Mr. Charteris placed his
with care to the side of the road, and said, "Oh!" It was perhaps the
only observation that occurred to him.

"Patricia," Musgrave began, very kindly and very gravely, "you are
about to do a foolish thing. At the bottom of your heart, even now, you
know you are about to do a foolish thing--a thing you will regret
bitterly and unavailingly for the rest of time. You are turning your
back on the world--our world--on the one possible world you could ever
be happy in. You can't be happy in the half-world, Patricia; you aren't
that sort. But you can never come back to us then, Patricia; it doesn't
matter what the motive was, what the temptation was, or how great the
repentance is--you cannot ever return. That is the law, Patricia;
perhaps, it isn't always a just law. We didn't make it, you and I, but
it is the law, and we must obey it. Our world merely says that, leaving
it once, you cannot ever return: such is the only punishment it awards
you, for it knows, this wise old world of ours, that such is the
bitterest punishment which could ever be devised for you. Our world has
made you what you are; in every thought and ideal and emotion you
possess, you are a product of our world. You couldn't live in the
half-world, Patricia; you are a product of our world that can never take
root in that alien soil. Come back to us before it is too late,
Patricia!"

Musgrave shook himself all over, rather like a Newfoundland dog coming
out of the water, and the grave note died from his voice. He smiled, and
rubbed his hands together.

"And now," said he, "I will stop talking like a problem play, and we
will say no more about it. Give me your portmanteau, my dear, and upon
my word of honor, you will never hear a word further from me in the
matter. Jack, here, can take the train, just as he intended. And--and
you and I will go back to the house, and have a good, hot breakfast
together. Eh, Patricia?"

She was thinking, unreasonably enough