Patricia was speaking quickly. She held a bedraggled parasol in one hand. Her husband noted, with a faint thrill of wonder, that, at times, and in a rather unwholesome, elfish way, Patricia was actually beautiful. Her big eyes glowed; they flashed with changing lights as deep waters glitter in the sun; her copper-colored hair seemed luminous, and her cheeks flushed, arbutus-like. The soft, white stuff that gowned her had the look of foam; against the gray sky she seemed a freakish spirit in the act of vanishing. For sky and water were all one lambent gray by this. In the west was a thin smear of orange; but, for the rest, the world was of a uniform and gleaming gray. She and Charteris stood in the heart of a great pearl. "Ah, believe me," she was saying, "Rudolph isn't an ophthalmic bat. But God keep us all respectable! is Rudolph's notion of a sensible morning-prayer. So he just preferred to see nothing and bleat out edifying axioms. That is one of his favorite tricks. No, it was a comedy for my benefit, I tell you. He will allow a deal for the artistic temperament, no doubt, but he doesn't suppose you fetch along a white-lace parasol when you go to watch a sunset--especially a parasol he gave me last month." "Indeed," protested Mr. Charteris, "he saw nothing. I was too quick for him." She shrugged her shoulders. "I saw him looking at it. Accordingly, I paid no attention to what he said. But you--ah, Jack, you were splendid! I suppose we shall have to elope at once now, though?" Charteris gave her no immediate answer. "I am not quite sure, Patricia, that your husband is not--to a certain extent--in the right. Believe me, he did not know you were about. He approached me in a perfectly sensible manner, and exhibited commendable self-restraint; he has played a difficult part to admiration. I could not have done it better myself. And it is not for us who have been endowed with gifts denied to Rudolph, to reproach him for lacking the finer perceptions and sensibilities of life. Yet, I must admit that, for the time, I was a little hurt by his evident belief that we would allow our feeling for each other--which is rather beyond his comprehension, isn't it, dear?--to be coerced by mercenary considerations." "Oh, Rudolph is just a jackass-fool, anyway." She was not particularly interested in the subject. "He can't help that, you know," Charteris reminded her, gently; then, he asked, after a little: "I suppose it is all true?" "That what is true?" "About your having no money of your own?" He laughed, but she could see how deeply he had been pained by Musgrave's suspicions. "I ask, because, as your husband has discovered, I am utterly sordid, my lady, and care only for your wealth."