for a while. The lust of victory died; the
tumult and passion and fervor were gone from Musgrave's soul. He could
very easily imagine the things Jack Charteris would say to Anne
concerning him; and the colonel knew that she would believe them all. He
had won the game; he had played it, heartily and skilfully and
successfully; and his reward was that the old bickerings with Patricia
should continue, and that Anne should be taught to loathe him. He
foresaw it all very plainly as he stood, hand in hand with his wife.

But Anne would be happy. It was for that he had played.

VI

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.