Christopher faced him with amazed indignation. Geoffry's whole
attitude and reception of his story seemed to him incredibly
one-sided.

"Of course it's better. A hundred times better. Do you mean you'd
rather have her the victim of a real madness she could not control?
Think what you are saying, man."

"To me, it's fairly unbearable if it's something she can help and
doesn't."

Exasperation nearly choked the other. To have to defend Patricia at
all was almost a desecration in his eyes, but he was her ambassador
and he stuck to his orders.

"She does help it. She's nearly mastered it now."

Geoffry put his hand to his injured head and gave a short laugh.

Christopher got up abruptly.

"What am I to tell her, then?" he demanded shortly.

The real tenor of the discussion seemed to break suddenly upon Geoffry
and he was cruelly alive to his own inability to meet it. He spoke
hurriedly and almost pleadingly.

"Don't go yet. I've got to think this out. Can't you help me?"

"What's there to think about? I've told you. I can tell you how to
help her if you like."

"I've got to think of a jolly sight more than you seem to imagine,"
returned the sorely beset young man irritably, but unable to keep a
touch of conscious superiority out of his voice, "a jolly sight more,
if I marry her."

"If you marry her?" Christopher turned on him with blazing eyes.

"I'm not saying I shan't--but it's a pretty bad pass for us both. I
know how she feels. Marriage isn't just a question of pleasing
oneself, you see. I must think it out for both of us."

Christopher began to speak and desisted. The other went on in an
aggrieved tone.

"I ought to have been told. Heredity of that sort isn't a thing to be
played with, you know. Anything might happen. Why wasn't I told?" He
walked to and fro, and stopped by Christopher again.

"I wouldn't mind a bit," he burst out, "if it were just a bad joke, if
she flung at me in fun and didn't expect to hit."

"She has a good aim as a rule," put in Christopher, too blind with
fury now to realise the other's unhinged condition, but Geoffry went
on unheeding.

"But to do it in a rage, and for nothing. Just a cold-blooded attack
and no warning. I can't get over it. Anything might happen."

His first indignant pang that Christopher had been sent on this
awkward errand had died out in the stress of the moment: he was ready
to appeal for sympathy, for help, or even bare comprehension in the
imp