“I—­oh, Jack, Jack, don’t you dare to talk to me like that!  We must be brave.  We must be sensible.”  Patricia, regardless of her skirts, sat down upon the ground, and produced a pocket-handkerchief.  “I—­oh, what do you mean by making me so unhappy?” she demanded, indignantly.

“Ah, Patricia,” he murmured, as he knelt beside her, “how can you hope to have a man ever talk to you in a sane fashion?  You shouldn’t have such eyes, Patricia!  They are purple and fathomless like the ocean, and when a man looks into them too long his sanity grows weak, and sinks and drowns in their cool depths, and the man must babble out his foolish heart to you.  Oh, but indeed, you shouldn’t have such eyes, Patricia!  They are dangerous, and to ask anybody to believe in their splendor is an insult to his intelligence, and besides, they are much too bright to wear in the morning.  They are bad form, Patricia.”

“We must be sensible,” she babbled.  “Your wife is here; my husband is here.  And we—­we aren’t children or madmen, Jack dear.  So we really must be sensible, I suppose.  Oh, Jack,” she cried, upon a sudden; “this isn’t honorable!”

“Why, no!  Poor little Anne!”

Mr. Charteris’s eyes grew tender for a moment, because his wife, in a fashion, was dear to him.  Then he laughed, very musically.

“And how can a man remember honor, Patricia, when the choice lies between honor and you?  You shouldn’t have such hair, Patricia!  It is a net spun out of the raw stuff of fire and blood and of portentous sunsets; and its tendrils have curled around what little honor I ever boasted, and they hold it fast, Patricia.  It is dishonorable to love you, but I cannot think of that when I am with you and hear you speak.  And when I am not with you, just to remember that dear voice is enough to set my pulses beating faster.  Oh, Patricia, you shouldn’t have such a voice!”

Charteris broke off in speech. “’Scuse me for interruptin’,” the old mulattress Virginia was saying, “but Mis’ Pilkins sen’ me say lunch raydy, Miss Patrisy.”

Virginia seemed to notice nothing out-of-the-way.  Having delivered her message, she went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol’s.  But Patricia shivered.

“She frightens me, mon ami.  Yes, that old woman always gives me gooseflesh, and I don’t know why—­because she is as deaf as a post—­and I simply can’t get rid of her.  She is a sort of symbol—­she, and how many others, I wonder!...  Oh, well, let’s hurry.”

So Mr. Charteris was never permitted to finish his complaint against Patricia’s voice.

It was absolutely imperative they should be on time for luncheon; for, as Patricia pointed out, the majority of people are censorious and lose no opportunity for saying nasty things.  They are even capable of sneering at a purely platonic friendship which is attempting to preserve the beautiful old Greek spirit.