i

But however miserable Patricia may have felt at night, she rose rewarded in the morning; for upon her breakfast-table she found a letter in an unknown handwriting. She pounced upon it with a lifting of the heart. "Miss Patricia Quin," she read. The handwriting was small and flowing, firm and curly. All the capital letters were large and beautifully formed; and yet there was a carelessness and grace in the general style which charmed her. The post mark she could not decipher. With sudden resolution, Patricia tore open the envelope, her intuition for once the infallible intuition of every woman's dream.

"Dear Patricia. Sorry you were not in when I called. What about coming out to dinner and to dance afterwards on Saturday? I suggest the Marnier, seven-thirty sharp; and then on to either Topping's or the Queensford. Yours ever, Harry."

Patricia gave a low laugh, and read the letter through a second time. How lucky that she would have a new dress! She sat down at once, with her note-paper and pen, biting the end of the pen as she planned the reply.

"Dear Harry," she wrote. "Splendid. Marnier, seven-thirty. Then which ever you like. I've never been to either. Yours ever, Patricia."

She carefully sealed the envelope, and wrote the address in a handwriting as near that of Harry as her natural penmanship allowed. She was still contemplating the letter and re-reading her invitation when Lucy kicked the door open and stamped into the room, kicking the door back again with her heel. Both sides of the door showed signs of Lucy's regular methods. With raw and dirty hands Lucy dumped down the meal.

"Cole," she remarked agreeably. "Young man come for you larce night, tole me to say he's sorry to miss you."

"Yes, thank you."

"Gotcher letter, then," said Lucy.

"Yes, thank you, Lucy." Patricia was trying to be sedate; but the sharp grey eyes of Lucy, which shone from above red cheeks and a snub nose and a grimy neck, were inexorable.

"Thought he'd write," said Lucy. "I ses, 'Can I take any message?'—you know, sweet as sugar. He gimme a card. Wouldn't leave no message. Fine lookin' young man, he was."

"I expect you were very excited," said Patricia, dryly—even, she hoped, quellingly. Lucy stood looking down at her, very sturdy and determined.

"What say?" she asked. Patricia repeated her remark. Lucy turned abruptly. "No," she said, over a raised shoulder. "But I thought you would be."

She was gone, leaving Patricia faintly pink.

ii

Although cold, it was a fresh morning. The clouds had gone, and the sky was blue. Patricia—having eaten her breakfast and hurried exultingly out of doors—felt a strong temptation to run along one of the streets leading riverwards. She could imagine herself standing upon the Albert Bridge and looking down at the swiftly-moving Thames. A fine breeze would be sweeping there. She would be able to pretend that she was at sea. How stern Patricia must be with herself! She vigorously maintained her course along the King's Road, towards Sloane Square, and there made her purchases. She thought: "I'm not like these other women. I know what I want. They stand fingering stockings for half-an-hour. I suppose it's a hobby. I simply ask for what I want. And get it."

This made her seem to the assistant who served her somewhat peremptory. Patricia took no interest in shop-assistants when she bought material for a dress for herself. She thought she did; but although she became indignant—vicariously—at thought of shop-assistants' wages, she did not really acknowledge that in relation to herself they had any existence. She retired from the shop with approximately what she had entered for the purpose of buying; and the assistant watched her go with an air of some preoccupation. As another assistant near her was doing the same thing, the two gathered together in order to discuss Patricia. They appeared to rub noses, as kittens might have done; mournfully and confidingly, holding conversation in a whisper, and separated only at the entrance of another customer.

"Yes, moddam?" inquired Patricia's shop-assistant, with mechanical address.

Patricia was far down the King's Road, carrying her parcel.

"I should hate to be a shop-assistant," she impulsively thought. "It must be a rotten life, attending to people who don't know what they want, and stand fingering stockings for half-an-hour, and then buy a reel of cotton. They like me, because I know what I want."

She could not help being rather pleased with herself.

iii

Now, while Patricia was busy making her dress, and forgetting altogether that she was going to meet him on the Friday night, Edgar Mayne, who did not even know that the meeting was to occur, was working quietly in his office, transacting business in which he had only a material interest. Edgar was one of those men, of whom there are many, who made money without deliberately intending to do so. It was true, as Harry had announced at the party, that Edgar had begun life as an office boy. He had left school at the age of fourteen, and had answered advertisements until one of them brought a favourable reply. He had begun life by copying letters by means of damp sheets and a press; and he had been promoted a year later to a junior clerkship. He had no interest in figures beyond that which natural aptitude could supply. He had none of the born accountant's delight in their possibilities. Solely, he brought to his accounts a character naturally precise, and with similar ease he could at this time have directed his intelligence to many other matters. If Edgar's parents had been wealthy, he would have had a complete education, and his gifts would have promised a great career; but they were poor, and themselves ill-educated, and so it became necessary that Edgar should early add something to the weekly budget. He did so.

From one competence he advanced to another. By the time he was thirty, Edgar was manager of the business, which dealt in the importation of those goods which English people require from abroad, and the exportation of goods produced in England for which there was a foreign market. He never saw the goods in bulk; but he saw samples of them and was furnished with myriads of catalogues specifying their quality and the current market rates at which they were to be bought and at which they were being sold. By means of occasional visits abroad, by more frequent interviews and excursions in England, Edgar grew to considerable knowledge of prices and conditions of manufacture. His advice was thus demanded by those directing the firm, who presently invited him to become one of their number. With increase of business came increase of income and power; and as Edgar's interests extended he found himself at thirty-seven a man of some wealth, who had at the same time a considerable standing among those able to appreciate his commercial acumen.

During this time his family had shared his progress. His father no longer worked; his mother directed the household, but no longer laboured upon her knees to keep it clean and neat. His younger brother, if he had not been killed in the War, would have benefited equally; while his young sister Claudia stayed at home and amused herself and everybody else very much by a display of housewifely virtues for which many others girls of her period, even if they have the inclination, can find nowadays no opportunity. The family, having spent miserable years in a place called West Hampstead, had moved seven years before the opening of this story to Kensington, where they occupied a small house and spent an agreeable, if aimless, existence. The elders, who were proud of Edgar, feared him a little; his sister, proud also, feared him not at all. It was she, in fact, who had kept Edgar human; for without her he might either have become lost in his business or have married some tepid young woman who herself had cast the die.

The household consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Mayne, Claudia, Edgar, Pulcinella (a small but irrepressible Cocker Spaniel), Percy (a cat with a character), and a cook and maids who were both respectfully spoiled by Mrs. Mayne. The servants despised Mrs. Mayne, and idolised her children. There was nothing which Claudia might not do without fault; and Edgar was so unobtrusively tended that he was almost unaware of the devotion which breathed firmly from the kitchen. He went his way, liking very simple things and dealing with them as they arose; and none knew the secret chagrin which lay always in his solitary heart.

iv

This chagrin was nothing less than loneliness. He did not easily make friends. His office work had so occupied his time and energy that Edgar had become rather shy in company. And so, while Claudia had a few friends, he had none. Claudia's friends seemed to him to be dull little boys and girls, for Claudia was a good deal younger than himself; and although he was amused when one or other of them was timidly pert to him they combined together to make him feel old. He had the reputation of a born celibate. Work, therefore, and more work, kept him rather staid. Edgar's fear was that he might dry up altogether before he had ever had time to live. With a warm heart, an eager sympathy, and a manner so reserved and shy that it gave the appearance of coldness, he was in danger—not, as he thought, of drying up, but of making some ridiculous plunge into emotionalism which might wreck his life.

Since the night of Monty's party, Edgar had thought much of Patricia. It did not please him to think of her in the rather sophisticated company of those who had gathered at Monty's. She was clearly delighted with these people, and they were a danger to her purity. Edgar thought more of Patricia during that week than of any other person. He liked her. He would have liked to help her—oh, always unobtrusively, so that she could not be embarrassed by his help;—but also not perhaps quite as impersonally as he supposed.

It was therefore with a start of delight and surprise that Edgar, upon arriving at Monty's house, found that Patricia was to be his neighbour at dinner.

v

His car had been behaving erratically en route, which is a way cars behave when they ought to be in perfect order; and therefore Edgar strode into the house with grimy hands, and kept the party waiting for several minutes while he washed. At last, hot and irritated, he joined the others, to find only Patricia, Monty, some people called Quellan, and Blanche Tallentyre. All were sitting or standing in a small drawing room, and dinner was immediately announced. Upon his left Edgar found Mrs. Quellan, a fair, large woman, originally thin and raw-boned, who was accumulating undesired and undesirable plumpness; and who wrote books for boys under a masculine pseudonym. Upon his right was Patricia, from whose dress all except one tiny white thread had been removed at exactly the moment when she should have begun her journey. The thread caught her eye as they sat down. It also caught Edgar's eye, which was not unused to such sights.

"I might have called for you if I had known you were coming," he said, unfolding his napkin.

"If you had, I should have kept you waiting," responded Patricia, with a small grimace.

"Were you busy up to the last minute, then?"

"Beyond that!" They laughed together.

Then Edgar glanced round the handsome room with its high and painted ceiling and its curiously severe walls of luminous grey. It was not a warm-looking room. There were no pictures; but the furniture was old and good. The table at which they sat was circular, and the light above caught all the brilliances of glass and silver ware, while it increased the cold darkness of the walls.

"Do you know these people?" he next asked.

"Mrs. Tallentyre was at the party. Isn't she unhappy-looking?"

"Perhaps it's only her manner." Edgar strove to make his tone light; for his assumptions were otherwise.

"No. It's real." They both verified the impression. To Edgar it appeared that Mrs. Tallentyre made adroit use of cosmetics; but they heightened the hard glitter of her eyes, and the markedly anxious vivacity of her manner. Patricia resumed: "Her husband was at the party. A horrid man."

Well: Edgar wondered what she was doing here at all, sitting at Monty's left hand and talking to Quellan as if she had something to gain from him. Mrs. Quellan, fortunately, was engaged with Monty. Jacobs, having served the soup, was at the sideboard with the decanters under his eye.

"I wish I'd known you were coming," Edgar said, rather lamely.

"I was told you'd be here." Patricia was perhaps roguish. "I've been feeling that I must have been rather silly.... I didn't thank you...."

"Oh, no.... I'd been thinking...." Edgar broke off.

"I met ... Mr. Rosenberg at Amy Roberts's the night after the party, and he asked me then. Amy Roberts was at school with me."

"Is she ... some sort of artist? Forgive me...." He saw that Patricia was laughing; but it was at a swift association of his stumbling enquiry with the monstrosity which stood upon Amy's easel. "I'm altogether ignorant of painting and reputations." Edgar could not have expressed the curious happiness which pervaded him at the sight of Patricia's laughing face. The new curve of her cheeks in laughter, and the poise of her head, were all delicious to him. Some reflection of his feeling must have appeared in his eyes; for she sobered almost responsive to his admiration.

"I don't think anybody knows her work," explained Patricia. Something like sorrow transformed her face. She was recalling Jack and his miserable confessions. "Mr. Rosenberg was praising a picture she's now painting when he was at the studio."

"You like it yourself?"

Patricia looked frankly back at him. There was something in Edgar which invited the truth. She felt strongly tempted to tell him the whole story of Jack. How strange that she should feel at once so intimately friendly!

"I don't know," she admitted. Then, quite astonished at herself, she went breathlessly on: "You see, I don't know anything about pictures; and I want to seem to know. It isn't pretence ... or not altogether. I want to understand. But Amy's so difficult, and you can't ask her to tell you why something that's very ugly, from one point of view, is really good from another. I don't mean that I like sentimental pictures. I hate them. But you need educating to appreciate the sort of things Amy does."

Unconsciously, Patricia had drawn the attention of Monty, at the other side of the round table. He had missed the opening words of her speech; but he had heard the conclusion.

"You need no education, Miss Quin," he cried. "She simply isn't an artist."

Patricia flushed deeply.

"I thought you were ... were praising her the other evening," she said, indignant and breathless, her face alight with vivacity. She was obviously loyal, obviously in earnest, and in such company demanding to be teased.

Monty's wicked smile made the others laugh.

"One must be polite, of course," he said.

"You think she's bad?" demanded Patricia. "I mean, you think her work is bad?"

"Terrible." They laughed again.

"But you praised her. Why do you let her go on?"

"One lets everybody go on. You can't stop a runaway car or a deluded woman."

Patricia glanced aside at Edgar.

"You think that?" she asked him before them all.

"It would hurt her to be told the truth. She wouldn't believe it, I suppose," he said. "If it would do any good, certainly tell her; but only a close friend whose judgment she valued would do good."

"Nobody, my dear Mayne. Amy Roberts couldn't understand." This was from Monty, who had his dark eyes fixed upon Patricia's every change of expression with a concentration not to be misread.

"She's my friend, you see," urged Patricia. "I hate to think of her being...."

"It'll do her good to find out for herself," said Blanche Tallentyre, with a snap.

Across the table Patricia stared a little at Blanche.

"I wonder," she answered, ruthlessly. "Aren't there quite enough unhappy women in the world, who've found out too late?"

It was strange that this was the first sign of temper she had shown. Blanche's eyes, as filled with miserable sophistication as a monkey's, glittered at the thrust. Her haggard cheeks showed no sign of emotion; but her lips were tightly pressed together. They parted to make retort, but were again sealed. Patricia hardly guessed, because she did not care, that she had made an enemy.

vi

While Patricia ignored the outcome of her remark, Edgar was not unaware of it. He had felt the electric silence which followed the speech, had seen Blanche's glitter, and had not been unprepared for the look of slow and comfortable malicious enjoyment which crossed Monty's face. To Edgar the truth was apparent. There was danger in the air. Dalrymple was not the only possible danger. Nor Harry Greenlees. Edgar was quietly alarmed. There was always danger; but in Patricia's case it was acute. She had done herself no good by that instant's admission of the power to hurt. She had roused Blanche's animosity, and had heightened Monty's interest in herself. With what assurance he could master, Edgar withdrew her from the general circle and demanded her personal interest.

"I have a sister rather younger than you," he said. "I should like you to meet her."

Patricia turned to him, her darkening obliterated.

"Is she very nice? And pretty?" she begged.

"Both," asserted Edgar. "She's very spirited, and slangy, and good-tempered. She's a great tease. And she's clever."

"And alarming!" cried Patricia, ruefully.

"Then I've been unjust to her. She's alarming, because she's unexpected. But I think you'd like her."

"Would she like me?" The question was not all coquettish.

Edgar smiled; and thereby caused Patricia to smile in return.

"I should like you to meet her," he said.

He was not wholly absorbed, even now, in Patricia. He could see Mrs. Quellan, growing slightly plump, but struggling against middle-age and natural gracelessness with all the energy of those whose youth has been lost in work and anxiety. He could see her husband, thin-haired, pale, and elaborately cheerful over suppressed care. He could see Blanche, so obviously what she was at that table, aged beyond her years, her spirit tired and malignant. And Monty, full of well-being and will and calculation, relentless and immovable in his design. The one fresh and unwarped spirit was Patricia. She was youth incarnate. She had vitality denied to all the others. And she was helpless through inexperience. She was over-confident, warm-hearted, blind.

Edgar shrugged slightly. He also was not without will.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "You must certainly meet Claudia."

vii

At the end of the evening, when they were in the car together, Patricia said:

"I feel sorry for Blanche Tallentyre; but I hate her."

"Well," replied Edgar. "Don't you think she may hate you, as well?"

Patricia did not speak. She was puzzled. She thought for some time before she answered him.

"I meant, I don't think Blanche Tallentyre can ever really have been ..." She paused.

"Young? Oh, I think ... I think perhaps you were more right about her than you knew," said Edgar.

"I found myself saying that," naÏvely admitted Patricia. "I didn't mean to hurt her at all."

"No," answered Edgar. "That was the devil of it. You never do mean to hurt or to do wrong, do you?" He laughed, which showed Patricia that he was not finding fault with her. "But I pity anybody who tries to make you do right."

"Well, you see, I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin," said Patricia, as though that were an all-sufficient justification of any idiosyncrasy.

"Quite so." Edgar was silent in his turn. Yet he was shot through and through with an impulse either to kiss her or to strike her; and he continued methodically to drive his car through the after-theatre traffic as though no such possibilities could ever have occurred to him. Patricia, wholly unconscious that he was anything but the quiet and composed creature whom she saw, basked in her delusion.

"I should think you must be an awfully good friend," she impulsively said.

"Should you?" Edgar's tone was expressionless. He did not relax his attention to the traffic.

No more was said between them upon that subject.

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