g, and buried
his face in his hands.

She came to him--it was pitiable to see how she came to him, laughing
and sobbing all in one breath--and knelt humbly by his side, and raised
a grieved, shamed, penitent face to his.

"Forgive me!" she wailed; "oh, forgive me!"

"You have pained me beyond words, Patricia," he repeated. He was not
angry--only sorrowful and very much hurt.

"Ah, Jack! dear Jack, forgive me!"

Mr. Charteris sighed. "But, of course, I forgive you, Patricia," he
said. "I cannot help it, though, that I am foolishly sensitive where you
are concerned. And I had hoped you knew as much."

She was happy now. "Dear boy," she murmured, "don't you see it's just
these constant proofs of the greatness and the wonderfulness of your
love--Really, though, Jack, wasn't it too horrid of me to misunderstand
you so? Are you quite sure you're forgiven me entirely--without any
nasty little reservations?"

Mr. Charteris was quite sure. His face was still sad, but it was
benevolent.

"Don't you see," she went on, "that it's just these things that make me
care for you so much, and feel sure as eggs is eggs we will be happy?
Ah, Jack, we will be so utterly happy that I am almost afraid to think
of it!" Patricia wiped away the last tear, and laughed, and added, in a
matter-of-fact fashion: "There's a train at six-five in the morning; we
can leave by that, before anyone is up."

Charteris started. "Your husband loves you," he said, in gentle reproof.
"And quite candidly, you know, Rudolph is worth ten of me."

"Bah, I tell you, that was a comedy for my benefit," she protested, and
began to laugh. Patricia was unutterably happy now, because she, and not
John Charteris, had been in the wrong. "Poor Rudolph!--he has such a
smug horror of the divorce-court that he would even go so far as to
pretend to be in love with his own wife in order to keep out of it.
Really, Jack, both our better-halves are horribly commonplace and they
will be much better off without us."

"You forget that Rudolph has my word of honor," said Mr. Charteris, in
indignation.

And that instant, with one of his baffling changes of mood, he began to
laugh. "Really, though, Patricia, you are very pretty. You are April
embodied in sweet flesh; your soul is just a wisp of April cloud, and
your life an April day, half sun that only seems to warm, and half
tempest that only plays at ferocity; but you are very pretty. That is
why I am thinking, light-head