i

Patricia was indoors. She lived in two rooms in an old house near the King's Road, and her rooms were at the top of the house. As the door snapped behind her she saw her little bedroom lamp as the only illumination of a narrow passage leading to the stairs; and instinctively she paused, her shadow thrown solid and leaping against the door, while the muffled sound of Edgar's car died away in the distance. The house was dark and silent, and Patricia's heart sank. A sigh of regret escaped her. It was hard to come so abruptly from the glowing scene she had left, with her brain in a ferment of all its new memories and wonderings, to this dingy home in which all was so tasteless. She slowly mounted the stairs, smoke from the lamp's flame smirching the glass chimney and rising acrid to her nostrils. Her bedroom was cold; and a damp shivering breath came from the open window, across which the curtains were yet undrawn. Outside the window everything was black. No lights came even from the houses that backed on to the one in which she lived. She could hear the rustling of the rain. A shudder shook Patricia. Deeply chilled, she moved away from the window.

Even when she was in bed, and slow warmth had returned to her body, she was conscious of unhappiness. It was not that she was normally discontented: she suffered now only from a sense of the acute contrast between this sullen room with the steady rain without and the warmth and peacock brilliance of the studio she had left. And the journey had been so rapid, and for the most part so silent, that she was plunged sharply back from her dreaming joy to sombre consciousness of every-day reality. Had there been a gay party homeward, had friendly voices shouted jocular farewells from the pavement, the happiness might have continued; but she was shaken at this sharp transition. For the first time Patricia girded at her loneliness, which until now—as independence—had made her feel so proud. To the sense of loneliness was added a memory of her poverty. To be alone and poor, young and eager, was to struggle with gloom itself. She did not cry; but a sob rose in her throat. It was such unmistakable anti-climax to be made to face the fact that she did not rightfully belong to this sparkling world of noise and light and colour in which she had spent the wonderful evening.

"Oh, dear!" cried Patricia to herself, suddenly desperate and at war with her lot, as other debutantes have been. "It's too bad. It's too bad!"

And then, fortunately, some little recollection from the multitude of recollections which would presently disengage themselves, made her smile. A soft little sound, such as a baby might have made, came from her throat, the lips being once again closed. Her hands were bunched at her breast. It was the reaction caused by the bed's cosiness and her sweet exhaustion. An instant later she was fast asleep, and in her sleep she smiled as she dreamed of a party of beautiful gaiety, in which she was supreme and unchallenged, ... the admired and the adored of all ... Patricia!

ii

In the morning she awoke to ambitious determination. At first waking she knew it was late, and sighed, very drowsy and comfortable. Happy thoughts began to float into her consciousness, and she smiled again to herself like a little girl. But when Lucy, the maid of the house, tramped up to her door and knocked there with knuckles of iron, Patricia no longer lay in reverie. She instantly arose, took her primitive bath, and was in her sitting-room long before the breakfast arrived.

There were no letters. There were never any letters for Patricia. Letters never come, she believed, to the truly deserving. She had a hunger for letters. She longed intensely to be like those young men in demodÉ books who opened uncountable bills and billets doux at the breakfast-table and stuck all their cards of invitation round the edges of the mirror upon the mantelpiece. The mirror was there; but no cards adorned it. The mirror had a gilded frame, and was no longer very fresh. It was flanked by vases intended to represent perfectly incredible marble. In the fireplace was a gas-fire, alight. The floor was covered with green and red oilcloth, and a woolly rug of yellow and magenta lay before the hearth. There was a sofa against the opposite wall, and at the window stood a sturdy table bearing a typewriter. In the middle of the room was another table upon which the first signs of breakfast were laid. Here, too, was Patricia's own little bowl of flowers. That bowl, the flowers, and the typewriter, were here her sole possessions. The rest belonged to the landlady who lived somewhere far below stairs, and it received daily a severe banging from Lucy, whose speed and energy exceeded her competence by about as much as the salary of a competent staff would have exceeded Lucy's wages.

Patricia went to the flowers and raised the bowl so that she could still detect the ghost of their waning fragrance. In her morning dress of blue serge, the collar high and the shape quite simple, she seemed perhaps taller and slimmer than she had been on the previous night. But she was quite as pretty, and the fresh pink of her rounded cheeks betokened good health. Her hair, which was not long, was arranged to-day as it had been arranged at Monty's party. She was the same girl, but she was graver, because this morning her thoughts were more active and she was therefore more sad.

She remembered old Dalrymple, whom she had met through the agency of Amy, asking her to go to the party with him, and calling for her; she remembered their journey, her entry of the mysteriously charming house, of the studio, her first sight of Monty and instinctive interest in that dark and impenetrable face. And then the noise and brilliance, and Amy, and all the gay talk, and Mr. Mayne.... For a long time she was shy of permitting any thought of Harry, as one sometimes leaves the finest peach to the last; and it was delicious to be always almost returning and arriving at Harry, to feel him perpetually there, summonable at impulse, and wilfully to hold thought of him in reserve. Yet in reality it was most often of Harry that she was aware in every wayward turn of memory.

iii

Breakfast was another blow for Patricia. There were bacon and eggs, and both were depressingly cold. The tea was strong and cold. Not so would breakfast be, she decided, in any home truly her own; though if, as she had long ago assumed, her future home were to be one in which servants played a leading part, she had no notion of the way in which cold breakfasts were to be avoided. Were there not such things as spirit lamps? Patricia had not stayed often enough in large houses to know that cold breakfasts are inevitable there unless the meal is eaten in the kitchen. She merely felt sure that Monty had hot breakfasts. But she did not associate her confident belief with the fact that he was an autocrat with a man-servant. It is the woman's lot to be ill-served wherever she goes. One has only to lunch at a woman's club in London to have this truth emphasised.

So breakfast this morning was a disappointment. Only good digestion—which she fortunately possessed—could have dealt with it effectively. And with breakfast finished, and the dish with solid streaks of grease upon it mercifully concealed by the cracked dish-cover, Patricia wondered what she would do next. She was at leisure, which meant that she was not in a situation; and her ambition exceeded her powers of performance. Her father and mother had both died long ago, and Patricia had lived the greater part of her life with Uncle Roly until his death a year since. He had been a casual man, subsisting from week to week upon a large salary which his habits converted into a small one. What he had done, except to go to an office every day, Patricia had never known; but while she had been with him there had always been plenty to eat, idleness and chocolates for herself, and drinks for Uncle Roly; and a holiday each year at the seaside or in the country. And then he had died, to Patricia's great but quite short-lived grief, and with his death ended the salary from which nothing had been saved. Patricia had exactly two hundred pounds, and the world to face. No relatives barred her path with offers of homes or advice. There followed a situation as typist at a time when even young girls were able to find remunerative situations. Dancing, suburban gaiety, restlessness, and boredom lasted as long as the situation. That too had ended; and Patricia, with only one hundred pounds of inheritance and savings left (for she had not been thrifty, any more than her fellow-workers and -players had been), was confronted with a new problem.

The alternatives were another situation, which was difficult to find, and a life of vague splendour derived from her talent. Search for the situation being tiresome, and therefore not very sedulously pursued, she was inclined to stake everything upon her talent, as yet unproved. A novel was undertaken—a very autobiographical novel, in which the heroine was extraordinarily charming; and short stories, small poems, little sketches and essays, were all produced from her brain and typed by her busy fingers. When one or two of the stories were accepted and paid for, she had no real fear for the future. She was sanguine with youthful confidence; and her remaining hundred pounds seemed an inexhaustible sum. As she thought of these things Patricia could not help feeling rather conceited. Sometimes, when she dreamed of her ultimate fame, she could almost suppose that those who passed her in the street were already conscious of it.

iv

It was after a day of wasted literary effort, when nothing would come right, that Patricia swept aside all sign of her work, and sought comfort from a visit to Amy. Amy—at least, the adult, as opposed to the child of other days—had first been encountered by accident about a month previously, when she and Patricia had both been shopping. They had stared at each other for a couple of minutes, both half-recognising and half-recognised, and had then pronounced each other's names, reviving a school friendship. Amy, who was alone in the world of London Æstheticism by her own choice, and in receipt of an allowance from parents who had plenty of money, was embarked upon an artistic career, and was trapesing about from publisher to publisher with a large portfolio containing pen-and-ink sketches depicting scenes in "The Vicar of Wakefield" and other classic novels. She thus sought employment as a designer and illustrator. She also made drawings of her friends in water-colour and experimented with oils; but as far as Patricia could see (with the candid eye of a true friend) she spent much of her time in dress-making and in drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. She wore her hair bobbed, and dressed in loose cretonne frocks and brilliant stockings and shoes that were as much like sandals as anything could be. She had a casual and dissatisfied air, and was developing extreme untidiness under the impression that untidiness was distinguished. That she was happy in her chosen life nobody to whom it was unfamiliar could have supposed; for it held neither security nor romance. On the contrary, it resulted in an aimless see-saw between gregariousness with others equally ego-ridden and amateurishly opinionated about the arts, and solitary days of labour at work which might have been done more competently by those of smaller Æsthetic pretensions. Still, this was the sort of society to which Patricia felt herself at this time drawn; and bohemianism in any guise was fascinating for both of them. They became good friends once more. Patricia made her way to the chintz-adorned studio in Fitzroy Street.

Amy, very professional in a long overall with sleeves, carried a brush between her teeth, and a palette over her left thumb, as she opened the studio door in answer to Patricia's mock-peremptory knock.

"Good!" she heartily cried. "Just the one I want. Don't take your hat off for a minute, and turn round. I want to see just exactly how the hair grows."

"All over the place, mostly," said Patricia, as she obediently turned. The picture in progress stood upon the easel, and represented nothing upon earth. A bloated something without form carried an eye upon its cheekbone. The miracle had been achieved of showing a head upon three sides of its common aspect. Patricia observed it with respect, although she might have been moved to great laughter if she had found it in a child's painting book. She looked crampedly from her stance, as she waited, upon such part of the room as was to be seen. It was not a large studio, but it was lofty, and although a bed stood in the farther corner it was the best combined room she had ever seen. It would be possible, she thought, to be quite happy here. The stained floor was bare except for rugs at the fire and beside the bed, and a large easel stood right under the glass roof. The studio was warm, and so lighted that it appeared to stretch indefinitely into the dusky corners. The only comfortable seats were a big deep armchair and a "podger" which lay against the wall by the side of the fire. Patricia continued to beam upon it as a home for one such as herself. She coveted the studio with a pure and humane covetousness.

"Ye-es," presently came her friend's comment. "All right, thanks. Sit down. Have a cigarette? Well, and you got home all right, did you? With your gay companion."

"He was gay!" jeered Patricia. "He hardly said a word."

Amy clucked her tongue. "Too bad!" she observed. "However, you'd have got soaked otherwise. Anyway, it was better than having Dalrymple. Did you ever see such an old toper? It was amazing. Monty won't have him again."

"Oh!" It was a cry of disappointment.

"Oh, that won't matter." Amy was laying down her palette and searching for matches as she spoke. There was cigarette ash all over the hearth in front of her little gas fire, and ash was scattered across the floor. The bed, covered with bright chintz, showed that she had lain upon it during the afternoon. "You'll be invited without him another time."

"Shall I?" It sent a spark of joy through Patricia to hear this. She looked gratefully at Amy's white face and smooth hair. "Really?"

Amy shrugged with a conceited air of boredom. "You made an impression last night," she announced. Patricia laughed gaily, and Amy continued: "It's easy enough, and it comes naturally to you. Of course, Monty's parties aren't what they were. He used to have a lot of decent people; but he's peculiar, you know. He gets tired of people, and drops them. It's the privilege you enjoy when you've got money. Only of course you've got to keep on making fresh friends, and he's not as bright as he used to be. He used to be able to talk. Now it isn't worth his while; so he says nothing at all. He thinks it. He's sardonic."

"He looks that," agreed Patricia, trying to seem as expert and as patronising as her friend. "But he looks interesting, as well; and that's a great deal."

"Oho! I should think he was. And as clever as the devil. But he's a beast."

"I don't mind that, so long as he isn't beastly to me," said Patricia. "I don't mind what anybody does, so long as they are nice to me."

Amy laughed, and professionally flicked the ash from her cigarette with a little finger. It was a laugh that held dryness.

"Oh, they'll all be nice to you," she observed. "No reason why they should be anything else."

Patricia pondered upon that suggestion, and upon the strange gleam in Amy's eye. She had so much affection to give, she thought, and she had met so much kindness in others, that there really did not seem to be anything but kindness in her whole life. Even Lucy, in her rough way, was kind. Amy, of course, did not know that, and had not meant to suggest it; but there were things which Patricia still did not understand at sight, in spite of her self-confidence in that direction.

"No," she said. "There isn't, is there. Except that I'm poor; but people don't notice that. Of course, Mr. Mayne was really very kind. But he's rather unbending, I think. He's ... well, he seemed to me to be rather out of place at Monty's."

So soon had she caught the trick of calling all persons by a Christian name! Amy, from a greater experience, noticed the more naÏve satisfaction of Patricia at the habit, and was amused by it.

"Yes. And then there's Harry Greenlees, of course," she prompted, a little inquisitively.

"Yes, Harry. He's awfully nice and amusing," said Patricia. She was instinctively guarded.

"Quite," replied Amy, now very dry. She shot a glance at her friend that hinted suspicion. "You see in that one evening you made three new friends...."

There was a pause; and then Patricia, who knew nothing of suspicion, went on:

"Amy ... do you know Rhoda Flower?"

"In a way. Not well. Just from seeing her at that sort of thing—and hearing about her. She isn't any good."

"What sort of things do you hear?" Patricia had caught that note, at least, and was stung by it to a question. Amy shrugged, since she had no fact to communicate.

"Oh, nothing ... Nothing really. But of course they're always together."

Patricia started slightly. They? Rhoda and Harry.

"Oh, yes," she said, as if merely in acquiescence. "I thought she was pretty, and looked all right."

"Rhoda?" Amy laughed scornfully. "Yes, she's pretty. But she's a fool."

"How d'you mean? Not got any brains?"

"With Harry."

Patricia was puzzled. She just prevented herself from saying "But I thought one did as one liked, without question, in Bohemia."

"What, ... what, is she in love with him?" she stammered, her eyes wide open.

Amy shrugged, blowing cigarette smoke from her nostrils.

"Oho, I don't know," she said, in a particularly measured voice. "Who knows? It's not the sort of thing one woman tells another unless she is a friend. But she'll burn her fingers with him, you can see. She's not experienced enough at the game. You've only got to look at him to see he's after every fresh face."

It came like a flash to Patricia: Amy's jealous of me! She was aghast and amused in the same instant.

"Oh, well," she cried, with masterly skill. "Who isn't?"

And then Amy and Patricia looked at each other, both smiling, but in conflict as they had not hitherto been. Amy's face was sickly, and there was an extraordinary glitter in Patricia's eyes. Patricia's thoughts leapt quickly forward, skipping all reasons and shades of interpretation. It was not merely of the impression which Patricia had made upon Harry Greenlees that Amy was jealous: it was of Patricia herself, of her power to attract, her intelligence, her freshness. Patricia, even under her horror and her inclination to ridicule such an attitude, was conscious of a sharp accession of complacency. She had entered this new world; she had seen it to be good; she had triumphed with the ease of mastery. It was her fate. She was confirmed in her belief that there was a genuine irresistible something in the world called Patricia. Nothing was impossible to her. The chagrins of the morning were obliterated.

v

Presently the two girls busied themselves in preparing a meal in the small kitchen attached to the studio. It was not a feast; but it satisfied them, and Patricia loved the sense of camping out. They ate it off a small round table with a large coloured napkin used as a tablecloth. The crockery was all odd, as Amy had purchased it from a former tenant, and one plate bore upon it the name of a famous hotel. They had an egg dish and some potted meat and some thin claret, with an apple apiece to complete the meal and some coffee which was rather the worse for wear. Amy smoked cigarettes continuously throughout, laying them upon the edge of her plate during mastication. Her consumption of cigarettes during the day was considerable, and she even smoked and read in bed. Patricia made a note of this, as it seemed to be a part of the bohemian life.

"I never noticed this plate before," she suddenly cried, alluding to the one which had upon it the name of the hotel. "D'you suppose it was stolen, or what?"

Amy shrugged, and wiped a small piece of clinging tobacco from her lip with a forefinger.

"May have been," she said. "Or else its a throw-out. You get them cheap in markets, I believe."

"I hope it was stolen," breathed Patricia. "Fancy eating off a stolen plate! But you'd wonder how any body smuggled anything so large out of an hotel. Awful if it fell!"

"You're perfectly ridiculous, Patricia," said Amy.

What strange eyes Amy had, thought Patricia. They were like big blue-green marbles. They stood out a little. Or perhaps it was only that her eyelashes were fair. Harry had beautiful eyelashes—long and dark; and they made his eyes look charming. She hadn't noticed Edgar Mayne's eyes.... Oh, yes, she had. They were kind and brown. Funny! The thought of him made her smile; but she had at the same time a curious warming of the heart.

"Isn't it strange," she remarked, thoughtfully, "that you can feel perfectly——"

But what Patricia had been about to commend to Amy's notice was lost; for at that moment there came a tapping at the studio door. Instantly Patricia had one of those celebrated intuitions to which all young women at times are liable. She felt sure that the person knocking was Harry. It proved to be Jack Penton, who came in as though the place were familiar to him, and stood frowning at the signs of their feast. He was as smooth and insignificant as ever.

"Oh," he said, in his rasping voice. "You've had your meal."

"Nothing left for you," answered Amy, brusquely.

Jack's manner in reply was protestingly sullen, as if he had been detected in a fault.

"I was going to ask you to come out to dinner," he grumbled.

"I don't think I could eat anything more," smiled Patricia. "It's so nice of you." That was her solace for him, a contribution to what she felt might be a disappointment to so worthy a young man.

"Well...." He hesitated. "I've just got along. Erm.... Look here, I'll go and get something to eat, and come back, if I may."

Amy agreed, and Jack was letting himself out when a notion occurred to her.

"If you meet anybody, bring them with you," she called after him. And when the door had clicked she turned to Patricia. "Don't go, whatever you do...." She put her hand to her brow. "That young man.... He's beginning to be a nuisance."

"What, Jack?" Patricia was full of sympathy for the absent. "But he's most agreeable. I like him."

"Yes," responded Amy, with rather a morose air. "You don't have to put up with him. He's moody. He's got a fearful temper, and he sulks. It's the temperament that goes with that complexion. He's dark and sulky. He hasn't got any notion of.... He's old-fashioned...."

"Do you mean he's in love with you?" asked Patricia. "That seems to be what's the matter."

"Oho, it takes two to be in love," scornfully cried Amy. "And I'm not in love with him."

"But he's your friend."

"That's just it. He won't recognise that men and women can be friends. He's a very decent fellow; but he's full of this sulky jealousy, and he glowers and sulks whenever any other man comes near me. Well, that's not my idea of friendship."

"Nor mine," echoed Patricia, trying to reconstruct her puzzled estimate of their relations. "But couldn't you stop that? Surely, if you put it clearly to him...."

Amy interrupted with a laugh that was almost shrill. Her manner was coldly contemptuous.

"You are priceless!" she cried. "You say the most wonderful things."

"Well, I should."

"I wonder." Amy moved about, collecting the plates. "You see ... some day I shall marry. And in a weak moment I said probably I'd marry him."

"Oh, Amy! Of course he's jealous!" Swiftly, Patricia did the young man justice.

"It didn't give him any right to be. I told him I'd changed my mind. I've told him lots of times that probably I shan't marry him."

"But you keep him. Amy! You do encourage him." Patricia was stricken afresh with a generous impulse of emotion on Jack's behalf. "I mean, by not telling him straight out. Surely you can't keep a man waiting like that? I wonder he doesn't insist."

"Jack insist!" Amy was again scornful. "Not he!"

There was a moment's pause. Innocently, Patricia ventured upon a charitable interpretation.

"He must love you very much. But Amy, if you don't love him."

"What's love got to do with marriage?" asked Amy, with a sourly cynical air.

"Hasn't it—everything?" Patricia was full of sincerity. She was too absorbed in this study to help Amy to clear the table; but on finding herself alone in the studio while the crockery was carried away to the kitchen she mechanically shook the crumbs behind the gas-fire and folded the napkin. This was the most astonishing moment of her day.

Presently Amy returned, and sat in the big armchair, while, seated upon the podger and leaning back against the wall, Patricia smoked a cigarette.

"You see, the sort of man one falls in love with doesn't make a good husband," announced Amy, as patiently as if Patricia had been in fact a child. She persisted in her attitude of superior wisdom in the world's ways. "It's all very well; but a girl ought to be able to live with any man she fancies, and then in the end marry the safe man for a ... well, for life, if she likes."

Patricia's eyes were opened wide.

"I shouldn't like that," she said. "I don't think the man would, either."

"Bless you, the men all do it," cried Amy, contemptuously. "Don't make any mistake about that."

"I don't believe it," said Patricia. "Do you mean that my father—or your father...?"

"Oh, I don't know. I meant, nowadays. Most of the people you saw last night are living together or living with other people."

Patricia was aware of a chill.

"But you've never," she urged. "I've never."

"No." Amy was obviously irritated by the personal application. "That's just it. I say we ought to be free to do what we like. Men do what they like."

"D'you think Jack has lived with other girls?"

"My dear child, how do I know? I should hope he has."

"Hope! Amy, you do make me feel a prig."

"Perhaps you are one. Oh, I don't know. I'm sick of thinking, thinking, thinking about it all. I never get any peace."

"Is there somebody you want to live with?"

"No. I wish there was. Then I should know."

"I wonder if you would know," said Patricia, in a low voice. "Amy, do you really know what love is? Because I don't. I've sometimes let men kiss me, and it doesn't seem to matter in the least. I don't particularly want to kiss them, or be kissed. I've never seen anything in all the flirtation that goes on in dark corners. It's amusing once or twice; but it becomes an awful bore. The men don't interest you. The thought of living with any of them just turns me sick."

Amy listened with attention. Her eyes protruded. She tapped her foot upon the floor.

"Yes, but you're not sensual," she said. "You're not an artist. Experience is a thing every artist must have. Not a humdrum marriage, and children, and washing books ... I must have experience—to do great work...."

Patricia's eyes flew to the canvas, now covered, which stood upon the easel.

"But ..." she began.

"You drive me perfectly mad!" cried Amy, suddenly beside herself with impatience. "You ask questions. You're like a child. You don't know what torment is. You don't know what it is to be bothered the whole time with all this ... never to get away from it."

"It can't be very healthy," said Patricia. Amy showed her teeth in an angry smile. She did not answer for several minutes, during which her face became set in an expression of discontented egotism.

"Sometimes I think I'll marry Jack just to find out what marriage is like," she said at last. "I could always leave him and go off on my own."

"Poor Jack!" thought Patricia. She said aloud: "He wouldn't like that."

"Oho, he wouldn't be any worse off than he is now."

"He'd be prevented from marrying anybody else."

"If I left him I shouldn't mind what he did," explained Amy. "Of course, he could divorce me."

Patricia thought she had never heard such confident expression of selfishness. It was one thing, she felt, for her to be selfish, because she really was wonderful; but to hear Amy speaking as though she had no need to consider others struck Patricia as almost abominable. She was pleased with the word—it was almost abominable. There was a long silence, while their thoughts ranged.

"I certainly don't think you ought to marry him," remarked Patricia. "It wouldn't be fair. You must consider him a little. His feelings, I mean."

Amy stretched her legs out in front of her and nestled her head in the corner of the chair. She lighted one cigarette from another, and slowly took two or three puffs.

"You'll find that it's best not to consider other people," she said at length. "They only become a nuisance. I'm kind to Jack, and he's a nuisance. I've told him he can go; but he won't go unless I definitely say I won't marry him."

"He's very weak!" exclaimed Patricia, fiercely. "I'm ashamed of him."

"He's not at all weak. He wants something, and he's waiting for it, that's all."

"If you feel like that, surely it shows that you mean to marry him in the end."

"I wonder if I shall," murmured Amy. "Perhaps. Perhaps not...."

"I could give you a good shaking!" cried Patricia.

vi

To herself, she thought: "She thinks she's immoral, when she's only conceited. How silly!" And with that she had her first glimpse of Amy's soul. The rapid judgment of others which children possess was still a faculty of Patricia's. Her self-knowledge was rather less. This that Amy indicated was to her an unknown world; but after all she had preserved her own liberty through a number of episodes common to the period in which she lived. The superficial excitements of dancing partners were not unknown to her, and she had the modern girl's knowledge of things which of old were hidden. Only a quick intelligence had saved her in the past, and she had been made exceptionally confident by experience in her power to deal with whatever situations might arise in her own life. Amy, who looked upon Patricia as a babe, continued to brood upon her trials.

"The men I like," she presently admitted, with candour, "don't seem to like me. The men who attract me. They go for the pretty, dolly woman."

"You're pretty," urged Patricia.

"They don't think so. What's left to me? People like Jack."

"But Amy.... It can't be so...." The word Patricia sought was "casual." "I mean, I thought one knew—that one either loved a man or didn't." She was pathetically bewildered.

"That's in days when a girl only knew the man she married, and one or two others. It's different now. You know a hundred men—who's to know which is the best of them?"

"Is that how the men feel?" asked Patricia.

Amy stirred in discomfort. She was ill at ease.

"My dear girl, you don't understand," she said. "There's physical attraction; and there's ... well, there's being pals with a man. But the old ideas of such things are gone."

Patricia shook her head. She was hearing of something she did not understand.

"I wish they weren't," was all she could find to say.

"They are!" fiercely cried Amy. "If I were a good girl, living at home, I should marry Jack and be told I'd made a 'suitable match.' But I'm not. I'm on my own. I'm going to have a life of my own. I'm going—I'm not going to be any man's property. That's finished."

A blank misery seized Patricia.

"I wish you were happy," she murmured. "Oh, I do wish you were." It was the only thing she could say, for she was not learned enough to arrive at any truer explanation than her own unutterable thought of a few minutes earlier.

Sombre dissatisfaction continued to cloud Amy's face.

"Yes," she said. "Of course, you don't understand. You couldn't. You've got one of those simple little natures. You're content. You don't know what suffering or temptation is. If a man says he loves you, you're ready to believe him. You're ready to fall in his arms."

"Am I?" inquired Patricia, dangerously. Her indignation was rising.

Amy looked suspiciously at her, too self-absorbed to give more than passing attention.

"You'll see. You're younger than I am. Perhaps you'll learn. Perhaps you'll find out for yourself what suffering is," she admonished, almost with a grim hopefulness.

There came again a sharp tapping at the studio door, and, as if bored almost to lethargy, Amy slowly moved to answer the call. Patricia, instantly alert to recall the injunction under which Jack Penton had departed, imagined hastily that he might have brought another visitor. And for Patricia at this time "another visitor" meant one only. She started at the second voice. Surely it was Harry's. Standing now, she faced the door, and could see beyond Amy to the figures of the two men who entered. First came Jack. There followed Monty Rosenberg.