“It has to be done quietly and without the remotest chance of Anne’s ever hearing of it, and without the remotest chance of its ever having to be done again.  I have about fifteen minutes in which to convince Patricia both of her own folly and of the fact that Jack is an unmitigated cad, and to get him off the place quietly, so that Anne will suspect nothing.  And I never knew any reasonable argument to appeal to Patricia, and Jack will be a cornered rat!  Yes, it is a large contract, and I would give a great deal—­a very great deal—­to know how I am going to fulfil it.”

At this moment his wife and Mr. Charteris, carrying two portmanteaux, came around a bend in the road not twenty feet from Musgrave.  They were both rather cross.  In the clean and more prosaic light of morning an elopement seemed almost silly; moreover, Patricia had had no breakfast, and Charteris had been much annoyed by his wife, who had breakfasted 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.