i

For two days Patricia kept within doors. She was broken and weary. For a time it was as though she had lost all the pride which had sustained her at the parting with Harry. She longed to see him, longed to beg for anything at all at his hands; and was restrained only by some timid delicacy, some fear, some paralysis of the will. The days were spent in sitting in her little front room, staring apathetically before her, or without seeing them at the fire and the murky sky. The nights were even more torturing, for if Patricia slept at all it was to dream hideously; while her wakeful tossings were almost unendurable. Harry, of course, came to the house; but Lucy was staunch, and he had been sent away with elaborate lies. Never until this moment had Patricia understood how much warmth and generosity lay behind the pink smudge of Lucy's face. She had been forced into half-confidence; and Lucy had understood the whole. At first, shrewdly, she had taken a consoling view. "Expect it'll come right," she had said, out of a deep knowledge of feminine psychology. "You feel queer now. You're all of a twitter. Then you'll want 'im, and go out and meet 'im somewhere on the sly. And—" But she had very quickly discovered that the break was serious. "Ah!" she had said. "All for the best, you and 'im bein' so fair, with blue eyes and all. I expect the babies would have been little niggers." She had sworn, refusing Harry's tips, that Patricia had gone into the country, leaving no address. Her pink face had glowed with the most righteous honesty. A letter had followed, a long letter full of explanations; and Patricia, although it had deeply moved her, had left it without acknowledgment. A further letter, asking for at least an interview, had been similarly ignored.

She was quite at a loss. Harry had meant so much to her, both in fact and in her happy dreams of love, that she was miserable without him. She knew that her silence was inexcusable; that it would make him think her merely the little suburban prig of his supposition. But the facts which were turned over and over in her mind—the sudden intuitions which had been the occasion of the crisis, his own attitude to marriage, the illuminations provided by Amy—were devastating. Patricia could not deal with them. They were too much for her. At times she tried to reason with herself. Fear sprang to her heart, and reduced her to panic. She made an attempt even to analyse her own sense of shock, to say that it was stupid, that it was squeamish, old-fashioned, babyish. Useless! The truth was more bitter than any merely cowardly flinching. Whatever might be her feeling in the future, she was almost hysterically determined at this moment. Her mind leapt on to blacker thoughts of Harry, and recoiled from them. All the curious exaggerations of wickedness which will arise in the most virgin minds tempted her own. They were repulsed. She was not yet sophisticated enough to be ready to believe the alarmist suggestions of her imagination.

At last she wrote to Harry:

"Dear Harry: I was silly to leave you under a wrong impression. I had been thinking I was in love with you; and then I had suddenly realised that I couldn't marry you. I wasn't shocked at the thought that you only wanted to have an affair with me. I had just felt that you weren't any use to me, and that I wasn't any use to you. I am very fond of you. I have never been so attracted to any one. It isn't enough for me. I want lots more. Sorry, Harry. Patricia."

To this letter there had been no answer. Harry, evidently, was lying low.

ii

So the matter stood, and Patricia was drowned in bewilderment and shame for as long as her first mood lasted. But then young buoyancy revived. On the third night she slept, and her dreams were sweeter. On awakening she was still unhappy; but as she lay in bed and her little thoughts darted about like shadows of birds she had suddenly an overwhelming fit of arrogance.

"Pooh!" cried Patricia, violently throwing back the bedclothes. She stepped out of bed and stood there, yawning, with her hands clasped behind her head, and her cheeks resting lightly against her raised arm. Downstairs Lucy had begun her strong clouting of the furniture. The morning was still grey. And as she stood there Patricia caught a movement in the mirror by the window, and was drawn across the room to it. In the mirror's depths she saw her own sleepy face; her little fall of hair, her soft cheeks, "two witch's eyes above a cherub's mouth," and the beautiful line of her neck. "I'm pretty!" she said to herself. "I'm pretty, and I know it. I've got taste. I've got brains. Pooh!"

And with that she went back to bed, to await the arrival of Lucy with the hot water. Wave after wave of arrogance passed through her in healthy reaction to her earlier despair. "I'm better off than Amy," she thought. "I'm cleverer than she is—not such an idiot. Rhoda ... poor thing! Poor thing to be known to be in love, and by a man who doesn't care for you at all. Unless he made it up! I wonder!" Did men pretend sometimes, as girls did, that they were loved? She expected so. She had known a girl who thought all men were in love with her, who thought a man must either love her or dislike her. Well, Patricia did not believe in that assumption. She admitted candidly that, although they seemed to like her, all the men she knew were not in love with herself. "It's very funny," she said, ruminating. "People in love.... I suppose there are all sorts of ways of being in love. There's Harry's way, which is just self-indulgence. There's Jack Penton's way, which is silly devotion to somebody who doesn't care that! There's ... oh, there's lots of ways. And my way—or my thought of way.... Perhaps it's only.... Pooh! If I don't love a man I needn't marry him. You can do all sorts of things, if you aren't one of these silly little creatures who give in. I'd live with him—if I loved him. I don't love Harry: that's why I wouldn't...." This, however, was bravado; and she passed on, ignoring the gross lapse into indelicate falsehood. "But he'd have to love me better than himself. That's it! I've got to be loved; not just wanted. I've got to be needed, and adored, and passionately wanted, and respected, and understood. Then I should be sure, and then I'd give back love for love—full measure. I'm too good for this ordinary love—this sort of 'affair' that Harry likes; or the marriage that's like taking a situation—'permanency.' I'm too good for it. I need half-a-dozen husbands to do me justice. I don't have to take what I can get. I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin!"

She was filled with supreme egotism.

iii

When little Jacky Dean called for her on the Saturday evening, Patricia was still full of her healing arrogance. She greeted Jacky rather sweepingly, because he was a young man who invited disdain; and in two minutes had received fresh reassurance as to her superiority to all other girls. Jacky was, in fact, the open-mouthed fair young man with whom she had found herself left at Topping's. He was always perfectly dressed, because he was wealthy and without occupation; and he was by way of being infatuated with Patricia. He was always at her service, always eager to stand a dinner or a dance, or a revue or musical play. Conversation beyond the "top-hole" stage he was incapable of reaching; but he was very dog-like, and looked sweetly pink and golden; and his dancing had improved; and he was never any strain, as he made no demands at all, but merely sought to be useful and obliging. He had two thousand pounds a year, with the prospect of more when an elderly aunt died; and he would proudly have married Patricia on the morrow. No wonder, therefore, that she was kind to him in a disdainful way, and refrained from hurting his feelings. Nothing would have made her marry him—the thought of doing so had never entered her mind; but she found his devotion rather pathetic at times, and always, in spite of the discipline Jacky received, most timidly fervent.

Jacky was subservient by nature. He had attached himself to the purlieus of the stage door as soon as he had become a man; he was a feature of river parties in the summer and every other sort of party for the remainder of the year. In physique he was a weed; but there was nothing noticeably the matter with him, beyond an amiable lack of brain. He was everybody's pet, as one who would never grow up and who never minded paying. Pleasure, in Jacky's case, was no feverishly-sought goal, but a state of being so customary as to limit his interests. His wan little face, with its air of constant innocence, was still that of a child. Whatever adventures he might have had in connection with the stage door had left him unscarred. He was still the delicious babe of his unripe years. Patricia found him easily manageable; he had never even dared to put his arm round her in a taxicab, although obviously he would have liked to venture this exploit. She had a considerable sense of power when she was in his company, and nothing had ever occurred to weaken it.

Jacky's idea of the evening was dinner in the West End, salted with cocktails in plenty, with champagne, and with old brandy. Then a taxi would carry them from Regent Street to South Hampstead in a fit state to enjoy a rowdy dance, during which Jacky, laughing with joy, would assist the band. But Patricia checked his enthusiasm. On no account could she risk a meeting with Harry—she even dreaded that he might appear at Monty's,—and her own plan was less ambitious. It was she who named the restaurant—an obscure place to which she knew Harry would never think of going; and Jacky was too mild of spirit to resist. They went therefore to this shabby place—the Axminster—where all was faded cream and gold, with rusty palms and magenta lamp-shades and artificial flowers and vulgar mirrors and English waiters. It is true that Jacky's face fell at sight of the bill of fare, and still more at the meagre printed wine list (with alterations in a crabbed handwriting), but in the midst of his furtive glance round preparatory to suggestion of flight he was diverted by the sound of a popular one-step as played to applause by the restaurant orchestra. He subsided, looking with shallow-pated amusement at all the respectable men and women of middle age who sat around them. If Jacky's simple-minded ingenuity in the matter of painting the restaurant red came to nothing, at least, as Patricia could tell, he was perfectly happy to be dining alone with his goddess; and the meal was carried through, upon his part, with a silence as complete as lack of ideas for conversation could make it.

iv

Patricia liked Jacky. Although silly and lacking in brains, he was very honest and very good-natured. When she said to him that she was out of sorts, and wanted to be quiet, he did not become fussy, and he did not sulk. He did naturally what was the best thing to do in the circumstances. When he thought of anything to say he said it, in his queer unlettered English; and when he had nothing at all to say, he cheerfully allowed himself to be silent. There was no difficulty at all. Patricia, although she was in such a state of advanced conceit, had one sweep of comprehension; and she was touched to the point of moist eyes and an ejaculation.

"You are a sport, Jacky!" she said, impetuously.

Jacky glowed. The colour came creeping up from behind his tall collar, and he jerked his neck out of the collar with a nervous movement, as of one whose throat has suddenly become swollen.

"Er ... Quite all right," he said, in his jargon. "Cheers; and all that...."

No more was said. They ploughed a way unsuccessfully through an ill-cooked meal, of which the major part was encased in thicknesses of flour and water which had been very severely fried.

"Er ... saw old Harry," presently said Jacky. "Last night—yesterday—I forget. He ... thought you were away, or something. Thought you'd forgotten our evening. Jolly glad you turned up. Er.... Must have been your...."

"He's not coming, is he?" Patricia's head was down. She was struggling to remain composed. That was what this meant: wherever she went she would see Harry, would hear of him. And she knew she wanted to see him, wanted to hear of him. It was the strangest sensation. Harry to her was become a stranger; she realised that she knew nothing and always had known nothing of his heart. But all the time she was deeply concerned with him. He was a stranger; but he was the only stranger she knew in that vast crowd of strangers. Patricia awaited Jacky's answer with dread.

"I forget what he said," answered Jacky, slowly and vaguely. "No, I don't think he could come. The old fellow was ... er ... some jolly old thing or other. I quite forget."

Patricia nodded. She must accustom herself to all this sort of thing. She had only to be firm when they met—firm and friendly (ah! how easy to contemplate; how hard to execute!), and all would settle itself. It was not like.... Oh, how silly life was! thought Patricia. Her eyelids fluttered. How alone she felt! Sometimes it seemed to her that with all these friends she had no friend. What was the cause? Was it in herself? Impossible! She said that last word aloud.

"Pardon?" asked Jacky, only half hearing Patricia's exclamation.

Patricia laughed at his surprised face.

"Only talking to myself," she assured him. "What's the time?"

"Have a KÜmmel," urged Jacky. "Cures anything." His own face was irradiated with a cheerful and meaningless smile. Patricia's heart sank. He was one of her friends. She was torn between shame for him, shame of herself for thinking shame of him, and a sense of superiority to her contemporaries.

v

They reached Monty's by half-past nine; and Patricia was struck by the difference between her sensations now and upon her first visit. Then, it had been fairyland. But she saw the studio with changed eyes. It was not so large or so beautiful; the people were not so handsome or remarkable. She looked round upon them with interest, but it was not as an astonishing body. It was with curiosity as to the composition of the gathering. Fully half of them were now known to her as acquaintances. The noise they made was familiar; she had no longer the feeling of fresh enthusiasm. She was restless and dissatisfied.

Only Monty still attracted her. She thought him easily more distinguished than any of his guests. Where they all appeared to say the same thing over and over again, he, by his silence, his inscrutable air of seeing everything and knowing everything, soothed and charmed her. When Monty danced with her she was happy. He was unlike the rest. Patricia could dance a whole evening with Jacky, and be unaware that there was any current between them of more than common enjoyment of moderate proficiency in dancing. But she could not dance once with Monty without feeling his magnetism. There was something amazing in his dexterity, in his immovable calm. To be with him was to be as one hypnotised. Monty's low, soft tones, with that singular rise at the end of each sentence; his certainty of resource; his extreme delicacy of movement and his fastidious politeness—these were the instruments of his hypnotic power. But the feeling she had that he was so wise in the affairs of life, so bored by them, so expert in handling them, went with a corresponding feeling that he was greatly attracted to herself. Monty's almost exaggerated respect, and the incessant flattery of his conciliatory manner, all moved Patricia to happiness. And her happiness was the whole time salted by the feeling that she did not trust him, that she must never be off her guard with him. It made Monty the more flattering, the more attractive. He moved her. He made her forget Harry.

There was something in Monty's manner which caused Patricia to feel that he knew all about Harry and herself—all about everything Harry had ever done; and that she would never know how much he knew of herself. She felt that nothing would ever surprise him, or move him; and yet at the same time she knew that he was a refined voluptuary, and that the soothing calm of Monty affected her own senses as even Harry's beauty and vitality and eager affection for herself had not done. She danced three or four times with Monty; and each time she danced with him it was as though she received from his touch a subtle current that made her, if not wiser, at least more experienced in the art of living dangerously and with relish.

To Jacky, afterwards, she said:

"Monty's an epicure. An epicure in sensation."

"Er ... yes," said Jacky, agreeably. Patricia thought her cliche enlightening. Jacky's vacant face was not. She had the feeling that she towered above Jacky.

"Nobody could say that of you," she remarked. But her tone was less offensive than her words. "You're just a nice little boy. You don't know anything."

Jacky shot her a look of infantile cunning.

"Ha, ha!" he laughed, with a small feeble simulation of heartiness. It roused Patricia's affection for him. She felt he really was a nice little boy, clean and unpretentious, not at all baffling or sophisticated or exciting. They danced together again; and Patricia felt how pleasant and uneventful it was to dance with Jacky.

vi

Patricia did not dance again that evening with Monty; but he spoke to her before she left. He had been bidding good-bye to some guests as Patricia was leaving; and Jacky was farther away, struggling with his overcoat. Monty, in the tapestried hall, subdued to dimness by the method by which it was lighted, looked like a Pasha. He was swarthy and impassive and alluring. Patricia had that quick feeling—of loose robes and a turban; and sherbet and willing slaves who came obediently in response to a clapping of hands. She imagined heavy incense, and the plashing of fountains and all the delights of those stories she had read of the East, and Monty was the Pasha of these stories.... He came to Patricia as she emerged cloaked and hooded and ready for the road.

"I'm sorry you're going," he said in his low voice. "We must dance again soon."

There was flattery in his manner; he made Patricia feel that he thought her beautiful and marvellous and charming and full of grace and tenderness. She stood beside him, as tall as Monty, but very slender and youthful, a complete contrast in her fairness.

"Yes, we must dance again soon," agreed Patricia.

"But how soon?" asked Monty. "Next week? To-morrow?—Monday?"

He was not at all urgent: his tone was gentle, almost caressing.

"Tuesday," suggested Patricia.

He bowed his head. Jacky had approached; and they both ignored him. He was the unnecessary third to their conversation. And Patricia had the feeling of danger. She was charmed and flattered. She suddenly felt that Monty was not the Pasha of her moment's invention, but that he was as sleek and perhaps as treacherous as a collie; and a recklessness seized her at the knowledge that behind his charm there might lie something that threatened all peace. If Harry had not been dismissed the charm might have been neutralised. Harry was gone. She had nothing but her own pleasure to think of, nothing but sensation and the confusion of the future.

Their farewells were said. With Jacky, Patricia was upon the way from the house. She still carried with her the sensation of having been enveloped by something as light as a mist. She was pleased and excited.