Charteris inhaled, lazily; yet, he did not like the trembling about Patricia’s mouth.  Her hands, too, opened and shut tight before she spoke.

“It is too late now,” she said, dully.  “I gave you all there was to give.  You gave me just what Grandma Pendomer and all the others had left you able to give.  That remnant isn’t love, Olaf, as we women understand it.  And, anyhow, it is too late now.”

Yet Patricia was remembering a time when Rudolph’s voice held always that grave, tender note in speaking to her; it seemed a great while ago.  And he was big and manly, just like his voice, Rudolph was; and he looked very kind.  Desperately, Patricia began to count over the times her husband had offended her.  Hadn’t he talked to her in the most unwarrantable manner only yesterday afternoon?

“Too late!—­oh, not a bit of it!” Musgrave cried.  His voice sank persuasively.  “Why, Patricia, you are only thinking the matter over for the first time.  You have only begun to think of it.  Why, there is the boy—­our boy, Patricia!  Surely, you hadn’t thought of Roger?”

He had found the right chord at last.  It quivered and thrilled under his touch; and the sense of mastery leaped in his blood.  Of a sudden, he knew himself dominant.  Her face was red, then white, and her eyes wavered before the blaze of his, that held her, compellingly.

“Now, honestly, just between you and me,” the colonel said, confidentially, “was there ever a better and braver and quainter and handsomer boy in the world?  Why, Patricia, surely, you wouldn’t willingly—­of your own accord—­go away from him, and never see him again?  Oh, you haven’t thought, I tell you!  Think, Patricia!  Don’t you remember that first day, when I came into your room at the hospital and he—­ah, how wrinkled and red and old-looking he was then, wasn’t he, little wife?  Don’t you remember how he was lying on your breast, and how I took you both in my arms, and held you close for a moment, and how for a long, long while there wasn’t anything left of the whole wide world except just us three and God smiling down upon us?  Don’t you remember, Patricia?  Don’t you remember his first tooth—­why, we were as proud of him, you and I, as if there had never been a tooth before in all the history of the world!  Don’t you remember the first day he walked?  Why, he staggered a great distance—­oh, nearly two yards!—­and caught hold of my hand, and laughed and turned back—­to you.  You didn’t run away from him then, Patricia.  Are you going to do it now?”

She struggled under his look.  She had an absurd desire to cry, just that he might console her.  She knew he would.  Why was it so hard to remember that she hated Rudolph!  Of course, she hated him; she loved that other man yonder.  His name was Jack.  She turned toward Charteris, and the reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being singularly nasty.  She hated both of them; she wanted—­in that brief time which remained for having anything—­only her boy, her soft, warm little Roger who had eyes like Rudolph’s.