i

Patricia made some important discoveries about herself within the next twelve hours. She was sleepless, and her brain was active. She found that all love-stories were entirely wrong, that they were too simple and too prudish. They did not represent her own feelings at all. And the more she tried to discover what her own feelings were, the more bewildered she became. Like so many other matters connected with herself, as to which she had no standards of comparison, her feelings seemed to Patricia to be unique. She was both ashamed and exultant at this.

At first she was too frantically troubled at the position in which she found herself to be anything but exclamatory. Within an amazingly short time she had allowed three men to make love to her, if with certain restrictions; and her sense of purity was horrified at this. There immediately followed, by reaction, some vehement attempts to justify her own conduct. But when she had been hysterical for a little while Patricia became calmer. The calm was even more false than the hysteria. It was in fact a feature of advanced hysteria. She was not equal to the strain which the events of the last few days had created.

"I don't love any of them," she said. "I'm too selfish—too wicked. I don't deserve to be loved. And I'm not loved, either. I wanted Harry to adore me. He couldn't! I want Monty ... he fascinates me. He excites me. I like it, and hate myself for liking it. He's passionate; he's sensual. And I'm passionate; I'm sensual. It's the wicked side of me coming out. And I only want Edgar to respect me. Respect!" She gave a hollow little mocking laugh. "He doesn't know me. He doesn't care for me. He couldn't adore me, because he despises me. He couldn't be passionate about me, because he's too cold. He's cold, I tell you. He doesn't know what it is to want somebody fiercely. I've got no power over him at all. And I must have power! I must!"

ii

Her mind went creeping back to Edgar, with a sort of raging contempt.

"He thinks love's an endless conversation. He thinks it's like paying another person's daily cheque into your own account, and being able to draw cheques to the same amount. It's a transaction. It isn't. There's no romance in him. He's business. He'd engage me as a wife as he'd engage a secretary. 'Good post.' A considerate employer! Everything in the day's round—breakfast, love, business ... I hate him! I could never move his judgment. He'd be kind; but he'd never really give in to me. Besides, I don't want to be just a part of a man's life. I wouldn't. I must be the whole of it. I'm too big to be a part of anything. The man I marry must adore me....

"It's strange. I could—I couldn't ever feel any shyness or pride with Edgar. I could tell him anything that came into my head.... No, I couldn't. He's intelligent; but he's amused at me. He doesn't take me seriously. That's his limitation. He thinks I'm a funny little insect. If I told him I was wonderful, he'd say, 'In what way?' Fancy trying to live with a man who asks what your ideas of love are! No, he wouldn't.... He'd say, quite calmly: 'Yes, I suppose you are. We all are, in our way.' He does everything with his head. He hasn't got a heart! He'd think me silly and vain and....

"Of course, if I was worn out—a poor, broken dispirited girl who just wanted a home, and food, and if I fitted in with his work, then it would be different. I'm not! I'm young! I want love and life, and other young people ... and admiration. I want power. And I want to be loved for my beauty ... as Monty loves me. I want to be desired, as Monty desires me. Edgar couldn't feel for me in that way.... He only cares for himself.... For me, perhaps, in a funny way. But only as something secondary to himself.

"I could go on living with Edgar all my life....

"I couldn't live with him at all. I could have lived with Harry, because ... Harry's stupid. He's obtuse. But he's charming. Edgar's not charming. He doesn't want to be. He could be, if he wanted to be. He only wants to be quite honest, quite fair.... My God! Fancy wanting to be quite fair in love!

"Why is it that I attract these men?" She laughed again, murmuring. She was diverted at her own scorn of her three lovers. Had life nothing better to offer her than a choice between charm and desire and cool affection? It seemed not. And yet on the whole, they were personable. Harry and Monty were handsome. Edgar, if not handsome, was not fantastically ill-looking. He had a good plain clean-cut face, and his hair and eyes and teeth were good. Oh, she admitted that! But she was thinking of them, not as men whom one might notice or fail to notice in the street, but as possible husbands....

Not only as husbands; but as husbands for Patricia Quin!

iii

These thoughts represented her arrogance. There remained her modesty. It did not apply in the case of Harry, because Harry lay, as it were, in the past. And he had not wanted to marry her. Did Monty? Patricia's thought of that was a wild blur. But the secret of her feeling of resentment towards Edgar suddenly emerged once more in the modest mood which now came. She had been able to charm Harry: she both attracted and excited Monty: she did not know what could attract Edgar to herself, since she felt she did not charm him at all. How charm the basilisk? If she tried to charm him he would think her farouche.

"He likes the truth. He'd soon find out that there's nothing in me at all. I'm only a shallow, pleasure-loving girl, who's caught his eye because she's pretty and young. That's nothing. Fifty thousand girls would do as much. He'd find me out. There's nothing in me. There's only vanity and ... and wickedness. He wouldn't like that. He'd be displeased with me for not being wise and good ... and sensible....

"He's kind. I trust him....

"What on earth am I talking like this for? Anybody would think I wanted to persuade myself to marry him. I don't. I don't love him; and never could love him; and I'll never marry him. He'd bore me. Besides, it's ridiculous. It's not as though I'd asked him to want me. I'm not a beggar—yet. And he doesn't really want to marry me at all. He couldn't care for me.

"I'm inferior to him. I have thoughts and feelings he wouldn't like. I'm full of ugliness and selfishness and wickedness.

"I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody. I'm horrible.

"Not really quite horrible. I'm only a ... you see, I'm ... I am nice. I am good!

"No, I'm no good. I'm no good to anybody...." There was a long tormented pause. Very low, with a sudden flush of blood to the cheeks, in an almost vicious despair:

"Except Monty...."

iv

There was a letter from Monty lying beside her plate upon the breakfast-table. It said:

"Dear Patricia: Come to dinner—here—to-morrow night ('To-night' when you get this). We'll dine and talk, and perhaps go and dance somewhere. Monty."

"Here" was his own house in South Hampstead. Patricia read the note as a command, and her brows were raised. Then she re-read it as an appeal. Her heart began to beat a little faster. For the first time she was repelled by the warning sense of danger. It was in a mood entirely reckless that she threw the letter aside, determined to go. The hardness was again in her eyes. It was as though she had snapped her fingers at Edgar; but her heart was heavy, and the curve of her lips was that of shame and defiance.

v

Monty sat in the studio waiting for his visitor. Those hangings which had supplied such barbaric decoration upon the night of the September party had been replaced. The whole studio was filled with colour, blazing from wall to wall. And Monty sat in sombre Napoleonic gloom amid the marvels of his invention. His face gave no sign of the slow and melancholy thoughts which were passing steadily, processionally, before his concentrated attention. Monty never hurried. He always saw his way clear before taking any step. He had a slow, fatalistic patience which was almost always rewarded.

For weeks now Monty had thought that Patricia Quin was desirable. He had seen her first at his own party in September, and since then upon many occasions. He had looked at her at first, speculating, with the cool observation of a connoisseur. There was much grace, much wilfulness: her movements were delightful, and the play of her light emotions full of singular interest. For a little while Monty had wondered how innocent she really might be; for he appreciated freshness as much as any traditional rouÉ could have done, and he disliked what was callow. His experience of women also made him suspicious of the assumption of purity in such young women as interested him. One of Monty's precepts had been "You cannot shock a woman." It revealed in him a standpoint already fixed.

As he had seen Patricia his interest in her had grown. She amused him by her confidence, her ignorance; she was fresh, and she had spirit. Moreover, when he thought of her, Monty had the air of one grimly smiling. Spirit in a young girl entertained him: it could be played with, and tormented. With its positive effects upon those less sophisticated than himself he had no concern. For Monty it had no positive effects, since he was entirely impervious to the behavior of others where his own determination was engaged. Such a spirit would be amusing to break. Nothing more. Even as he thought that, Monty had an increased stolidity of air. But his interest was not only in her spirit, which was probably the mark of unstable will. Patricia seemed to him in every way delectable. She was unspoilt; she was to be won by flattery; she was to be kept by insolence.

Nevertheless, Monty did not under-rate the address which might be required in winning Patricia. He had dealt previously with young women who were without experience of love. He foresaw that Patricia would be shy as a doe, ready at a single alarming move to fly. She could be flattered, interested, cajoled, by way of her vanity; but not yet was the moment to be ruthless. That, perhaps, was a part of the game. Patricia could be roused, indulged, enjoyed, slowly punished. At least she must be handled with finesse. Monty calculated his finesse.

A point which alarmed him was that his own interest had grown beyond what he had at first imagined that it would be. He had not been, at any time, wholly cold-blooded in his design. That was not the whole of Monty's nature. He had a slow, rising passion; and it was this which determined his actions in all matters of sex. But he had been surprised to find, especially at their last two meetings, that Patricia's innocence, and her virgin coldness, had moved him to an unexpected degree of desire. Only by the greatest self-control had he refrained from alarming her.

Monty appeared to sleep as he sat in his chair in that barbarically-decorated room with the glass roof. A look of heaviness spread across his face. Slowly his head fell back among the cushions. He was intently listening, and his eyes were closed.

Monty had been right. The noise he had heard had been that made by the bell. An instant later the studio door opened and Patricia appeared, demure, even roguish, but pale and, as he immediately saw, in a state of over-strained nerves which signalled caution. She was alarmed by the sense of danger, in no mood of submission, but as timid as a wild bird. So much was clear even from her glance round the empty studio, the involuntary sway of recoil which marked her realisation of its emptiness.

"Hullo!" cried Patricia, in greeting. "Am I the first?"

"You're the most welcome," Monty assured her. "Come and sit down. What a cold hand! Is it so very cold out?"

"Freezing," Patricia assured him. "And it's a horrid journey, you know."

"How stupid of me!" murmured Monty. "Yes, that's very stupid. I'm so sorry. It's unpardonable of me."

"Never mind. It's really quite all right. Who else is coming?" she asked, eagerly. "Not that I need anybody else, of course." The quick addition was a conscious attempt to placate him, the result of an effort to seem more experienced than in fact she was. It did not deceive Monty.

"That's so kind," he answered. "To dinner—nobody. I thought you wouldn't mind just ourselves. But afterwards there are several people—Felix, and ... oh, I forget. Rudge and Cynthia Blent and Mackinnon and Timothy Webster. Several more. But they won't be here till good and late."

Patricia nodded. Monty had not failed to observe her relief. He felt he had been wise in thus departing from his original intention, and preparing an after-dinner party. His letter had suggested another pastime, as they both knew. Neither commented. It might have been, he thought, a trivial piece of policy; in reality, as Monty instantly saw, it had saved the day. He was perfectly well-aware that otherwise Patricia would have been on edge for the evening.

"Very fortunate," he thought definitely. "Something's been happening to her. Look at the eyes, the pupils ... hands.... Drawn lips. Not only fear of me. ... Strange. What can it be? It's Greenlees, I suppose; but what? Is she deeper, or stupidly excitable?"

"Dinner is served, sir," said Jacobs, from the doorway.

"Come along!" Monty caught Patricia's arm with an attempted air of gaiety. It was essential him that he should touch her. At that moment his impulse was savagely to embrace her, to force her body against his own, to hold her to him while he kissed ravenously her neck and cheeks and shoulders.

Patricia started at the touch, and there was a warning degree of resistance in her slightly rigid arm.

"I'm so glad you've got the hangings up again in the studio," she said, with attempted ease as they entered the dining-room thus linked and apart. "They make it like a necromancer's consulting room."

vi

"And supposing myself to be the necromancer," said Monty, across the table, "how would you wish to consult me?"'

Patricia unfolded her napkin before answering, and looked round the dining room. The ceiling and walls were dim, because the room was lighted only by half-a-dozen candles set upon the table. The table itself had been made as small as possible, a perfect circle, and was not covered with a cloth. The candles within their decorated orange shades gave a mellow glow. She could see directly across the table to Monty, hardly three feet away, and soup was served the instant she was seated. Jacobs, having served the soup, retired from the room to await a summons. "I should wish to consult you ... oh, upon a great number of things," evasively answered Patricia.

"As for instance?"

She smiled, looking quickly round, as if with a sinking heart.

"I don't strictly know what a necromancer is; but supposing him to be a seer of the future, I should like to know ... I should like to know...." Again Patricia hesitated. Hastily she improvised a substitute for the real problem in her mind. "Do you believe in anything at all?" she asked.

It was strange how tones, however low, were audible in that room. She could hear Monty's rich, caressing, magnetic voice, so soothingly quiet, as if it came from beside her.

"What would you like me to believe in?" he begged. "In Progress, or Faith, or the future of England and the Arts? In Beauty and Goodness? In yourself?"

"In honesty, for example. In truth."

"My dear Patricia, you shock me," protested Monty. "I have the greatest respect for truth, and of course for honesty."

"Have you any familiarity with either?" She could see that he would not talk seriously; and she presently was glad that he would not do so. She had wanted answers to other questions, and not to those she had put. The other questions it would have been impossible to ask.

"Patricia, I find that truth and honesty are supposed to be dull—so commonplace as to shock even those who seem to be unable to invent any satisfactory substitutes. 'Let us,' says the life-weary dweller in this district, 'let us read something and see something at the theatre which will take us away from the sordid truth of every-day life.' And yet, I have never seen truth. I believe I shouldn't know it if I saw it. 'What is truth?' asked jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. He might have waited until the last trump. As for honesty, it's an appanage of truth, another romantic illusion. If you had asked me if I believed in Beauty, or Goodness, or in yourself, I should have said that the terms were indistinguishable."

"That would have been ample answer to my question about honesty," said Patricia. "I don't think I shall ask more questions of the necromancer. He seems to me rather specious." Nevertheless, Monty's elaborate reply to her false question had increased her composure. She was almost at ease, but still there was something to Monty not quite comprehensible in her ever so faintly agitated manner. "Won't you ... won't you tell me something about Carthage, please, or Egypt, or the Desert...." she asked.

"The desert," said Monty, musingly. "Yes, the desert...."

vii

He described to the wondering Patricia the Nile as he had seen it, and how it takes its rise in the mountains, and how at first the river is red and then green because of the flood of the Blue Nile, and how the flood of the White Nile comes later, so that the banks are covered and the surrounding country is inundated with rich fertilising mud. He described the desert, and repeated that short poem of Shelley's about the King Ozymandias. He told her of the sounds and colours of the East, of all those things which as a traveller he had seen and experienced. He pictured the crowds of the Bazaar, the contrasts, always keeping to familiar things of which she might have read, for the sake of reawakening past imagination and past emotion, which would be so potent in colouring her present mood. And all the time he was speaking in that slow magic-creating voice of sweetness. Monty's eyes never once left Patricia, but continued to absorb her fairness and her purity, as though he could never cease from desiring her more than anything upon earth or beyond life itself.

So given were they both to this scene that the food before them was eaten mechanically, and the wine they drank insensibly was making them more intimate and more at the mercy of the hour; and Patricia hardly knew that she was eating and drinking, so much was she in a dream. And in the dream she was haunted by the sense that she would awaken, that fierce, cruel birds of prey were tearing her heart, that never again would she know tranquillity or ease of spirit. And Monty was watching her still, with eyes that yielded nothing and took everything, while he sought only to maintain the power which he was achieving by the effect of his story upon her imagination. To Monty all the marvel of which he spoke was familiar. He was unmoved by it. Patricia's beauty, and that alone, was the cause of his unrelaxing attentiveness, the creeping white heat of his feeling, which grew each moment more fierce, more concentrated, more difficult to keep within his own power. He was moved so vehemently that his eyes were glowing. Into his face had stolen that look of greedy sensual heaviness which his passion created. His voice was lower, and the softness had given place to a dryer tone, still caressing, still full of unknown music, but deeper and less smooth. His lips were apart, showing his white teeth. His hands upon the table were rigid.

And something made Patricia look suddenly at Monty, when his expression was unguarded; and she had this clear understanding of his nature and his attitude to herself. Again she had the sensation which had come to her at night after they had parted; of blood which rose to her cheeks and shoulders, which in its recession made her body burn. It was with fear, a fear which made a shrill cry of protest, of agony, difficult to repress, that she slightly shrank. The colour faded from her cheeks. It was succeeded by deadly pallor, and a trembling such as she could never previously have known.

viii

After the dinner was finished, they went back to the studio for coffee; but the picture of the East was forgotten, and to both of them it was the moment alone that was the secret preoccupation. Patricia sat upon a low seat near the fire, and smoked a cigarette; and they spoke of other things without conviction, and without more than a pretence of interest or intimacy. And when Monty would again have engaged her with pictures of travel she was steadfast in refusal to yield herself. There was a chasm between them. He could see that she had taken fright. He was once more adroitly soothing—talked of the furnishings of his studio, and, indicating each, said how he had acquired it, and with what pure cunning—talked not very light-hearted nonsense about the people who were coming later in the evening—talked of pictures and music, of mountains and lakes and seas—everything to reassure her and restore her ease. But all the time Patricia could remember that glow in his eyes to which she had awakened at the table; and she shrank back, uncontrollably, filled with vehement dread, shocked with the sense of these impenetrable hangings, the dreadful silence beyond the closed door.

And Monty could not continue to control himself with the same coolness. With every effort to maintain the earlier calm, he was driven by urgent necessity to approach her more nearly. Still he did not touch her; but his manifestly exercised restraint was betrayed in every tone. The colours of those barbaric curtains and chairs began for Patricia to merge and swim together. And Monty was no longer a man; he became some diabolical and terrifying figure, dark, sinister, grotesque. She was afraid—not now of herself, as she had been, but solely of him. She was cooler now, but watchful, still half-fascinated, but as one on edge in face of danger. Monty was laughing and speaking of the dancing which they had amusedly noticed at their last visit to Topping's; of Jacky Dean; of the crowd; of other clubs. He imitated Jacky's devoted, colourless style, which moved him to great mirth, prolonged until it began to jar. And at last he said:

"Have you seen the new steps? Look...." As he spoke, he began dancing alone in the middle of the brilliant studio, a black figure of grace, his head turned from her so that she should not see the colour of his cheeks and the ferocity of his eyes; while Patricia watched the movement of his feet and the poise of his body. "See? Ta-ta-tum-ta.... Two steps ... it's a variation of the Tango, of course, very much simplified; but it's rather deceptive. Try it...."

He approached her, his hands outstretched. With a heart of water, Patricia rose, half-protesting. Their hands met, their heads were level. And as Monty held her so he increased and strengthened his hold until with suddenly uncontrollable passion he was savagely pressing her to him and with fury advancing his face so that he might command her lips. His whole body was rigid. The muscles of his arms were like iron to her tender flesh. Patricia did not scream. She could not have done so. Both were desperately silent except for their heavy breathing. She withdrew her head to the greatest distance that Monty's cruel hold allowed, until she was suffocating. One hand was tightly pressed to Monty's side between his body and her own, and was useless. The other remained. With all her hysterical strength she used it to push away that dark, insistent face. Patricia's strength at the moment of stress was so abnormal that, suddenly exerted so very little more, it might have been sufficient to dislocate his neck. It was for an instant only. They were struggling no more. Monty released her, and they drew apart, panting. Red marks were beneath Monty's chin. Patricia felt bruised, as she might have done if she had been severely beaten with a stick. She was shuddering.

"I'm sorry, Patricia," Monty said, harshly. "I beg your pardon. It was too much for me." The two of them turned away from each other, Monty breathing rapidly, Patricia still almost stifled. "Did I hurt you? Poor child! I was brutal. I'm sorry...."

With her heart seeming to beat in her throat, Patricia nodded slowly.

"My fault," she said, indistinctly. "I ought...."

Both, if it had not been for breathlessness and dishevelment, were treating the situation with strange coolness, as if all heat had evaporated from it. Patricia had no fear. She knew that the embrace could not be repeated. It was as though the fire which had burned in Monty had been extinguished. He stood before her, recovering his normal address, the heaviness gone from his face, and the fury from his eyes. Already he was slipping back into that slow thick courtesy of manner which had been so attractive. Quite soon he would be debonair, perfectly at ease. And she herself, incapable of thought, and in a state of physical agitation though she was, became apparently composed. But even as Patricia felt this, she was overcome by deadly sickness. Her pallor was increased. She groped her way to the fireplace, resting her head against the cool mantelpiece in an effort to recover. And as she stood thus, only half-conscious, there came a sound which made Monty start. He gave an exclamation, and turned quickly. At first his hands went to his neck, instinctively to the spot where he might bear marks of the struggle. Then, from a sharp glance, with similar intent, at Patricia, he discovered her fainting condition.

"Good God, you're ill!" he cried. "That's the bell. They'll be coming now. Drink this. For God's sake don't let them see...."

As he spoke he moved quickly across the studio to a cupboard, from which he produced and brought to her side a decanter and glass. Again Patricia nodded, taking the glass from his hand, and sitting once more upon her low chair, and drinking the brandy. It made her cough. In the midst of her coughing the studio door opened and a merry group of newcomers, all peeping and laughing, appeared without.

They gave universal shouts of greeting, and proclaimed envy of anybody caught with a brandy-glass in her hand, and made general uproar. And in doing so the crowd pushed its way into the studio and its members scattered.

"Hul-lo!" they jovially cried. "Caught you, Patricia! Leading an inebriate's life, I see.... Greedy! Oh!"

Patricia, laughing, waved the glass in acknowledgment; but it was poor laughter, and was fortunately unheard amid the louder noises of the careless people who had brought their own gaiety.