i

The noise which the others made, as fresh arrivals increased their numbers, enabled Monty to return to Patricia's side. She could see a whiteness even in Monty's cheeks when he was quite close to her, and her aversion to him died. Quickly her heart told her that he too was suffering.

"How are you feeling? Would you care to lie down? Shall I get you a taxi? I can't get rid of these people yet. If you'll lie down, I'll take you home later."

"I'll go soon," she whispered back, touched by his subdued tone. "Don't worry. I'm all right. I'm better. I'll go presently, when I feel able. I'll just slip out."

"I'm so sorry," he repeated. "Look here, I must see you before you go."

At that her nerves again raised protest. A deep shudder shook her.

"I'd rather not," she said, in the same low voice. "I couldn't stand any more ... excitement to-night."

"I must see you," he said. "You mustn't go without giving me five minutes."

And at that moment there was a loud call for him from the other end of the studio, and Monty left Patricia. She continued to sit quite still, while the brandy began slowly to have its effect. The blood stole back to her cheeks. She looked at her little hands, which lay together, clenched, in her lap, and slowly unclenched them, so that the knuckles were no longer white. The nails had left two or three pink marks in her palms, which gradually disappeared. The shuddering left her body, which was now quite inert. A dreadful sensation of staleness pervaded Patricia. Her head ached. Quietly, and as if by accident, Monty was near her again. He poured a little more brandy into her glass.

"Patricia's not very grand," she heard him whisper to another man. "See that she drinks this, will you?"

The other man, a stranger, drew up his chair, and sat near her, talking in a low voice while she drank the brandy. She could not understand what he said, but his voice was grateful. She smiled her thanks at him, and her attention wandered away to the groups in other parts of the studio, so loud, so closely resembling in appearance the groups which had been present on the occasion of her first visit to this studio.

So much had happened since that evening that she realised how changed she now was. It seemed to Patricia that she must have been a child then. She felt very old now, as if she were looking back, an old woman, upon days of happy ignorance. The noise did not echo sweetly in her ears as it had done. This was no longer an enchanted meeting-place for those who were wise and wonderful and superior to the rest of all human beings. She had seen so much, and felt so much, since she had first known them that the staleness which had come upon her this evening was diffused among the visitors. She felt them to be also stale, curious automata chattering to hide their emptiness and unhappiness, as she too might now chatter to combat the knowledge that she was weary and unable any longer to experience simple things with her old fresh delight.

A sigh shook Patricia. The feeling of sickness remained with her. And this stranger who tried vainly to distract her attention with idle speeches about things she did not understand and did not want to understand was no other than the rest. She could see his long hair and hear his thin light voice; and she was stirred by a contempt for all that these groups represented. But her contempt no longer arose from a sense that she was superior to the groups. For the first time she was sick at heart as well as in mind and body. She made no attempt to listen. She only felt tired and filled with distaste and the longing for quietude and sincerity. The crowd became vague. At first Patricia thought that she was again in danger of fainting; but she was immediately better, and able at last to hear what the man said. He was talking about the theatre, and was describing a play he had seen.

"Perfectly ghastly...." he was saying. "And all these suburbans were enjoying it with all their ears. A silly little fool of a girl, supposed to be extraordinarily charming; and saying and doing the most incredible things...."

ii

Patricia could never have understood that it was her state of mind alone which made these people distasteful to her. Any other crowd would have seemed equally empty and unprofitable. But she was sitting amid the noise sobered by her late excitement; and her reactions were so rapid that she was misconstruing a mood as a revelation. As she had hitherto over-valued herself, and then, by the mere plunge of her neuroticism, had undervalued every quality she had, she now felt aghast at the results of her own unreasoning wilfulness. She saw herself as a feather, tossed by every wind of inclination, veering, flying, without will. She was deeply shocked.

She thought of Harry; of Monty; of Edgar; and she was ashamed. There was no indignation towards Monty; only acid shame. She had been fascinated, tempted; she had been flattered and excited; and her vanity had betrayed her. When the reality had come she had awakened to the understanding that this fascinating sport with fire was a horror to her. She, who had thought herself so clever, and so experienced, was appalled at the very thing which she had supposed so fascinating. She felt like the little boy who coveted one of those big glass jars full of coloured liquid which still stand in the windows of small pharmacies; and who, when the water had been emptied, found himself possessed of a jar without beauty. Nothing could have been more bitter than the realisation that she was a fool who had not even the courage to pursue her folly to its end.

Patricia had played with the idea of love for Harry; and it had been shown to be empty. She hardly thought of him. Lightly, she had fallen in love with love. And then, tempted, she had enjoyed her sense of power over Monty. She had responded to him, encouraged him; and the result had been this evening's ignominious struggle. The bruises she had received had been not only those of the body; they had been bruises of her self-esteem, of the immaculate legend of Patricia Quin.

Subdued, miserable, she accepted her mortification.

"I've had my lesson!" she thought. And then, with a rising of that fear which she had thought to allay by means of excitement, she exclaimed: "But what in the world am I to do?"

iii

It was to Patricia an appalling moment of realisation. She fell into a kind of stupor, a dream in which all things appeared to her in a clear light of understanding, in which facts which hitherto she had not truly perceived were made apparent. She was not asleep, but she was so absorbed in contemplation that all noise made an undersong to her reverie.

"I've been too clever," she thought. "I shall always be too clever for myself, too big for my boots. All my life. I shall go on and on, thinking myself so marvellous, until I come up against ... what? How am I marvellous at all? What have I ever done that I should consider myself marvellous? Nothing!" It was a terrible confession. If she had been alone she must have screamed. But she was not alone. She was in this wildly-coloured room, where each thing had been brought and placed by some inner certainty of judgment on Monty's part, until the whole room was a sort of picture of his mind; and there were others laughing and talking within a few yards of her. And as Patricia remembered that this piece of stuff had been brought from that place, and this other given by some friend, and a lacquered chest discovered in a small shop in Dublin, and a bronze figure ... she could not prevent herself from thinking that Monty was much more wonderful than she would ever be, much more wonderful, perhaps, than she had ever imagined. She saw him among his guests, ever and anon glancing to make sure that she was still there, that she was better; and Patricia knew that in culture and acquaintance with all beautiful and sophisticated things he had wisdom that she would never attain. This whole house was filled with his personality, filled with his taste and his knowledge, his love of rare things and those that were rich in colour and florid in design. His interests were innumerable. He could talk of all the arts as only one who was a connoisseur in each could talk. His sensitiveness to these arts, so coolly displayed, was due not only to spontaneous outgoing to whatever was sightly but to the gift which enabled him to appraise its quality, and that degree of precision to the artist's concept to which a work of art owes its singularity and therefore its permanence. He was not a child, exclaiming at a toy: he was the product of a civilisation, of many civilisations. His merest words were charged with references and associations of which Patricia must for ever remain ignorant. And with all this knowledge, all this culture, Monty was at bottom the crude animal she had discovered. He had wanted her as an animal wants another animal of the same species. And Patricia had opposed her will to his, her instinctive doctrine of life to Monty's. Well?

Harry Greenlees had nothing like Monty's culture. In Monty's sense he was not even educated. But even Harry was better-instructed and more positive than herself. He was an individual; he could stand alone; whereas Patricia only tried to do so, and made a tremendous fuss about standing alone. Harry was physically as charming as herself. He was lively, beautiful, able to do many unexpected things which were outside the needs of his daily life. He could spend whole days alone without monotony, which in itself was testimony to his endowment. He could tell all the wild flowers of Europe in their seasons; without pretending to be a musician he could play the piano well enough to be mistaken by the unlearned for a professional; and without pretending to be an artist he could draw with a certain cunning. And he was a competent journalist, a specialist in his own department, rough and ready in diction, but capable and individual in style. His technical acquaintance with all sports was considerable. In his own way Harry also was a connoisseur. He had a devotion to sport and sportsmanship, and a code which related itself to the sporting code; and his sureness of judgment in everything sporting was that of a good critic. And at bottom Harry was just a rolling stone, wandering about the world for the fun of it; and he had wanted Patricia for his chum, to roll about the world with him for a space, until one or other of them was tired of the exploit. And Patricia had refused to roll about the world, because she imagined that she had a nobler destiny. Well?

Edgar was a man who by the strict disciplining of his natural capacity had done what came first to his hand. He had learnt the details of a business which had been distasteful to him; and he had mastered them. He had made money, he had travelled, he had created a microcosm for his family, in which they moved graciously and comfortably. The whole of his business was at the tips of his fingers; his reading was considerable, and his understanding enormous. She had never yet found Edgar betraying by a false note any failure to comprehend the essential qualities of a subject or its intricacies. His mind was so trained that he unerringly caught secondary meanings, and those which were implicit. He spoke without any air of authority; but she knew that he was reckoned wise even among men of greater accomplishments. And Edgar had offered her help and love; and Patricia had clung to her own path of folly. What had she to put against this weight of challenge? If she insisted upon her personality, in what way was the intrinsic value of this personality made manifest to the impressible world?

Soberly Patricia faced the challenge, shrinking from it. She was a pretty girl; she had high spirits, cleverness of wit and tongue; an extraordinary sense of the possibilities of her own talent. And she was essentially a woman. It was because of her sex that she was at a disadvantage in her power to experience active life; but it was also because of her sex, and not because she could command equality of knowledge or understanding with them, that these three men sought her and desired her. If she had refused all of them it was because either she thought none of them was worthy of her love; or because she had such confidence in her own individuality that she preferred to go forward alone. That is, because she thought that the gift she had for the world was greater than the gift which these men desired of her. Was it that she proposed to remain unmarried, to ignore love? Her response to Harry and Monty had proved that this was not so. She could not stand alone. Patricia shrank from the knowledge; but it was forced upon her in her present mood. And presently she made, aside from all these specious exaggerations of the value of knowledge for its own sake, a genuine discovery.

To the question which rebelliously she put to her own challenge, "Why should they be so much ... more learned ... than I?" came an answer which was a revelation. It was unwelcome. She disliked it, and presently would fall upon her own intuition and perhaps destroy it. But for the moment it was valid. Patricia was not incapable of such flights of intuition, and—as she did now—she generally over-valued them as truths. The answer which she received from herself in the course of this singular vision was: "Because they are all interested in something else besides themselves."

She awoke from her dream to find that the party was still in progress; and that the man beside her was still speaking with unabated zest of the theatre, which seems to be an unrivalled subject for monologue. With a yawn, Patricia saw that the whole of her analysis had passed within a few minutes. Nevertheless she remembered it very clearly; and she was still, as the result of her intellectual pilgrimage, very serious.

iv

It is one thing to receive such an inspiration as this, however, and it is quite another to believe it. To believe it, that is, as one believes in such things as breakfast, or to-morrow, or relativity. Consequently Patricia felt already a little vague. She was not satisfied even with her inspiration, though it had descended in a dream. She knew that it was a feminine intuition, and feminine intuitions, however acute, are as the interpretations of the stars or the palm or the tealeaf—never so remarkable or so celebrated as when they are confirmed. And as she conned her problem, Patricia had a very singular notion. She found herself thinking:

"I shall ask Edgar."

She was astounded at herself. She almost begged herself to repeat something half-heard which had seemed incredible. "Oh, I couldn't ask him!" she said, as if in answer, "I shan't see him again. Of course I shall see him again. How absurd! I mustn't be silly. He's my friend." And with that a low small laugh escaped her lips. Her thoughts strayed into a fresh vein. She wondered what would have happened if the others had not come into the studio, if Monty and she had still been alone there. She knew that she would not still have been in the studio at all, since she would have been driven to leave the house long before. And her mind leapt back to that suggestion about Edgar. Again she had that consciousness of refuge in him. "I should have ... I should have...." Then, very quietly indeed, but also with conclusive sharpness: "I couldn't...."

If only one could do things as they came into one's head, all the same, how easy life would be!

Patricia sighed. She interrupted the young theatrical enthusiast, who was talking about societies which were being formed in all the villages in England for the performance of Euripides in Gilbert Murray's translation.

"What nonsense!" she said, still only half-attentive to what her new friend was saying, and without conscious rudeness. "I'm going home now. Thank you very much for looking after me. I'm quite well again."

And with that she rose and went quickly to the door of the studio.

Monty followed.

v

He made no attempt to conceal his pursuit from the other guests. He was too obviously afraid that Patricia might slip out of the house, and so escape him. And the urgency of his desire to speak with her was extreme. He arrived in the hall just as she disappeared into the room where her hat and coat had been left; and Monty waited there in the dimmed light, a sombre figure, with his head lowered and his broad shoulders bowed. To Patricia, emerging, he was like an emissary of the Inquisition, so appalling, even to her expectant eye, was his appearance. She lifted her own shoulders with a slight brusqueness, her head high, and her breath rapid.

"Good-night," said Patricia, quickly. She moved towards the front door.

"Not yet." It was an appeal, a deep whisper.

"No, no. I'm going."

"I must see you—speak to you—for an instant. Patricia...."

Monty had interposed himself in order that she might not reach the door without touching him, and as Patricia could not have borne this contact she was checked instantly. She stood, hesitant; and then with bowed head followed the direction of his entreating arm and stepped into the room at the farther side of the hall. It was the amber-hued drawing-room in which Edgar had seen Monty a few evenings previously, a lofty room which the electric light caused to become faintly and alluringly luminous. There was a fire, and the room was warm; but Patricia was shivering a little as she stood a short distance from the door, facing him. Monty followed her into the room, closing the door.

"Won't you come over to the fire?" he said in his gentlest tone. "I can't let you go like this without a word."

Still that careful modulation, still the raised note at the end of the sentence! She went nearer to the fire, and Monty stood near her, by the table.

"Aren't you going to forgive me?" he asked, suddenly. His manner was slightly changed. A familiarity had entered it, as though they had a secret understanding; but he was still bearing himself with soft respect. Nevertheless, beneath his humility there was ironic contempt for her sex which betrayed him.

Patricia started at the tone, at the discovery. The tears came to her eyes. She felt she had no use at all for such false contrition as he was prepared to display. It was not forgiveness Monty desired. He was deliberately pandering to a mentality which his sensual cynicism led him to despise. Having, apparently, no belief in purity in women, he was prepared elaborately to connive at its cunning or hysterical assumption and to submit to its merely formal placation. He was the diplomat, playing a familiar game, bargaining with vanity; not a penitent. And to Patricia such insolent flattery was more offensive than a brazen making-light of the episode would have been.

"Don't talk like that, Monty," she begged. "It isn't forgiveness you need; and you know it. I can't talk about forgiving. Surely you see that."

"I want you to believe that in asking you here—" began Monty, cajolingly, still with that cringing air which masked watchfulness for any sign of emotion or relenting.

Patricia laughed—uncontrollably.

"Oh, Monty!" she exclaimed; and there were still tears in her voice at the knowledge that he held her to be simply a common piece of woman's flesh, to be won still, so long as he sacrificed to her false delicacy, assumed, perhaps, for the sake of bargaining.

"It's true," he persisted, with more energy. Patricia turned aside, weary of the encounter, sickened at his cynical insincerity.

"I've told you I don't want to talk about forgiveness," she said. "I couldn't forgive you, because there's no question of that. It's myself that I can't forgive. It was idiotic of me to try and play a game I'm not fitted for, and I'm ashamed of myself. Isn't that enough?"

"Then you'll come again?" he questioned, as if puzzled.

"No," she said. "I've had my lesson. I've been silly and wicked; but you've been worse. And you're still being worse, you know. You're under-rating me. You think I'm pretending. You think you've only got to flatter me to find I'm no better than ... the rest—I suppose." She shrugged. "I'm not pretending. I'm going."

"I love you," Monty told her. "You were surprised. You were shocked...." He was still persisting in his former attitude because his imagination was not quick enough to anticipate the changes of this chameleon. But he was admiring her perhaps more than he had already done, and finding her still very desirable.

"I was horrified," Patricia said slowly. "But we're not talking about the same thing." She was very serious now. And the fact that she was serious made her again baffling to Monty, who had expected tears or reproaches or formal forgiveness, and was trying to discover some new point of contact which would at least gain time. Given time, he thought he was always assured of victory; but he was in a difficulty. She had changed, slipping out of his power to dominate her; and he had not the key to the change, for that lay in Patricia's singular vision.

"We're talking about...."

"No," said Patricia. "I came here in a reckless state, because I'd been very miserable; and you asked me to come because you wanted to make love to me."

"And I frightened you," said Monty quickly. "Poor little girl!"

"You did me a lot of good," answered Patricia. "You shocked me into my senses."

Monty stared at her, his dark eyes glowing, and his face once more alight with admiration. She saw him moisten his lips, and saw his hands clenched by his sides. But also, from another point altogether, she heard a faint incomprehensible sound. At once she strained her ears; but Monty had heard no sound, and continued to stare at her. The sound Patricia thought she had heard was a tiny crunching of gravel outside the house. She stared back at Monty, her nerves quivering. Dread was back in her heart.

"There's nothing to fear," said Monty, in his level voice of reassurance. "I'm not going to lose my head again as I did early in the evening. I beg your pardon for that." Patricia bowed her head again in acknowledgment of his apology; but she was no longer heeding his tactical advances. As he spoke, her eyes were glancing from Monty to the window. She looked so slim and fair, with the golden light of the room evoking the gold in her hair and the delicate gleam of colour in her cheeks, that Monty was moved anew as he had been earlier in the evening. He was engrossed in her, his eyes avid and his excitement intense. "By God, you know, you're beautiful, Patricia," he whispered. "Look here, we'll go together to the East, and you shall see all those wonders for yourself." She did not seem to be listening. Monty played his trump card. "We'll be married, d'you see, and go straight to the East together; and you shall have...."

In his eagerness, Monty came towards her, his hands outstretched. He was continuing, with increasing vehemence, when Patricia interrupted him. She would have cried out that what he offered was unthinkable, but, as she made the effort to speak, her eyes were caught by something that stifled the words. She could only stand there, looking beyond Monty, to the doorway, her lips parted as if in the act of speech, her body rigid with amazement. For there, just within the room, silhouetted against the golden door, was another person—a woman, heavily cloaked, with the hood of her dark cloak shrouding her face, a woman who had heard the last speech as she swiftly and silently opened the door, and who stood perfectly white, as if she were stone. Within the fold of the hood Patricia saw two glittering eyes. All else was white, ghastly.

"Really!" said the woman, in a breathless tone, as if she were stricken with illness. "Monty!"

It was Blanche Tallentyre.