i

Patricia arrived at the Maynes' house a moment early. She had walked from her rooms through one of the streets to the north of the King's Road, and in spite of her new boredom, which made her a little shrink from the prospect of an evening with uncongenial people, she was aware of curiosity at sight of the house. It was one of those tall featureless houses which lie in respectable avenues in Kensington, stained by a kind of grim insipidity and separated from the road by an iron railing, a grass plot, and an immense flight of stone steps. The portals were massively columnar, and the windows bay. There was nothing to make the Maynes' house different from those upon each side of it excepting the number and the fact that the iron gate did not groan as it was opened. From without, the house was what Patricia expected.

Indoors it was distinct. There was no smell of cooking; the walls were papered in a blue-gray, the staircase was fresh and clean with blue-grey paint, and a carpet of the same colour in a rather darker shade extended as far as she could see. Her mind instantly received the impression: "Liberty!" The maid was young, pretty, smiling, and curious. And as Patricia went forward into the room into which she was informally shown Edgar himself was there, with a plump old lady and a pretty young woman and a surreptitiously barking immature cocker spaniel all close behind him. Patricia received a shock. This was a home, the first home she had been in for years. These were kind people. Her heart was opened to them. She was a child at once, eager that they should like her and be her friends. How strange it was, when she had dreaded something alarming and something boring. She was hardly conscious that they looked at her with keen eyes and brains, so definitely did she feel herself greeted by warm hearts. She was for an instant deeply moved.

"My mother, Claudia, Pulcinella ..." said Edgar, with a minimum of awkwardness.

There were two warm hand-clasps, and a glance, ever so rapid, at Claudia; and Patricia saw the little dog's tail twisting, and stooped to pat the glossy body which was being shyly insinuated into her notice by its agreeable owner. In the firelight and gaslight there was cheerfulness, but there was peace also, and it was the tranquillity—the homely quality of peace—that Patricia first noticed. She saw it for a moment only; and then Claudia led the way up to a bedroom in which she could remove her cloak and hat, and smooth her hair, and if necessary, powder her face before dinner. But Patricia had no need to powder her face, and so the two girls had no opportunity for any prolonged mutual scrutiny by means of the mirror. They were shy of each other, and hardly spoke together until their return to the drawing-room. It was then that Patricia, sitting down, first properly glimpsed the Mayne household, which by now had been brought to full strength by the arrival of old Mr. Mayne and a sedate cat whose name was Percy.

Mr. Mayne was a man of over sixty, small and thin, with a fierce aspect and a ridiculously mild voice. He had a moustache and beard resembling the pictures Patricia had seen of pirates. His eyes were commanding. Only his voice was inappropriate. It was a clear deep voice, but it lacked volume; and in face of such a terrifying presence it came as the bleat of the kid from the mouth of the jaguar. His wife was equally gentle, but she looked placid, and in Mrs. Mayne there were no sharp contrasts. She was round, plump, and cheerful, the sort of a woman upon whose lap a ball of wool refuses to stay, especially when there is a little dog at hand. Very different from these were the two children. For Edgar Patricia was conscious of an increasing sense of respect. She now saw that his quietness had its quality and interest. His rather grave face, with its general air of brownness, was not one which attracted her; but he looked well-built, and her friendliness towards him would have been perfect if she had not felt one very singular thing about Edgar. It was that he went his own way. With great considerateness of others, she was sure, but quite inhumanly, he went his own way. Patricia felt that if he decided to do a thing an effort beyond her own power would be needed to turn him from his object. She had made up her mind that he was not subject to human weaknesses, and she resented the aloofness created by this freedom.

Claudia was different again, but not equally disconcerting. She was tall, and noticeably pretty, with a very occasional immaturity of gesture which indicated her youthfulness. Dark, and a little like her brother, she had a gaiety of demeanour and a sparkling air of enthusiasm which his temperament forbade. To Patricia there was something irresistibly charming and wise about Claudia. That she also went her own way, if such was the case, caused in Claudia's case no barrier between them. It was natural and right that Claudia, being a modern young woman, should go her own way. Patricia went her own way. She thought of Claudia: "She's prettier than I am, but her figure isn't as good. Nor's her taste. She doesn't dress as well as I do. She's very clever and kind and nice. I like her. Of course, not as clever or as nice as I am. But then I'm...."

It was extremely pleasant to be in a comfortable home which really was a home, and to be in the company of such born friends as the Maynes. Patricia sighed with content.

ii

She had not noticed Percy, who had entered the room during her absence; and Percy, who had been washing his face, had not noticed Patricia. When he discovered that a stranger was in the room Percy was slightly annoyed. He did not like strangers. It had taken him some weeks to grow used to Pulcinella and even now he sometimes spat at the little dog, for Percy had been for three years the dominating force in this house. When Percy wished to leave or to enter a room he gave a single blood-curdling deep miaow; when he thought the time had come for him to be nursed he took his welcome for granted; when he shook off the years and demanded a game they were all at his service. Although Pulcinella was insistently lively, no real romp ever occurred in which Percy was not the leader. Even Pulcinella, who barked and bounded in the effort to produce a mock-battle, was afraid of Percy; and the human beings were not so much afraid as respectful and affectionate towards him. Percy therefore disliked strangers, who disturbed his sense of what was proper. Pausing in the act of licking delicately extended fingers, he stared rudely at Patricia. He decided to watch her for a few moments before making up his mind as to her acceptability as a new acquaintance.

Patricia, quite unconscious of this important scrutiny, was allowing herself to be entertained by Percy's elders. She did not see a big Persian cat, whose long hair was nearly as black as his dignified nose and whose tail, when paraded, was as large as an ostrich feather. She merely looked from the small face with bushy whiskers of Mr. Mayne to the beautiful soft complexion of Mrs. Mayne, and again to the exuberantly expressive eyes and lips of Claudia. She liked Claudia better and better each minute. She did not look at all at Edgar, in whom she was conscious of feeling no true interest whatever.

"Isn't it very lonely for you to live alone, Miss Quin?" Mrs. Mayne was asking. She did not wait for an answer; but continued: "I've never lived alone, so I don't know what it's like; but I should have thought it likely to make a young girl miserable. Yet I know, of course, that one sometimes wishes very much to be alone with one's thoughts. As a holiday it must be very pleasant...." It was the quiet voice of a contented woman that meandered slowly and almost prattlingly among words that came without effort.

"Think of the liberty, mother!" exclaimed Claudia. "Not always having other people to consider. Not always having somebody to say she isn't ladylike."

"I like it," said Patricia. "And I'm not at all ladylike."

"Perhaps you're not much alone?" suggested Claudia.

"Oh, yes. All day. But I'm generally out in the evenings."

"Claudia always speaks as though I were a fault-finding mother; but it isn't true, and I don't think she means it altogether. I should be sorry to think I was a fault-finder," ruminated Mrs. Mayne.

"You're a darling," Claudia declared. "But, like most mothers, you live in the past. You don't feel that you're grown up and that you don't understand this generation. That's what I complain of." She turned to Patricia. "This is a very difficult household. Father doesn't care two straws about anything that goes on outside the house, except the things that are put into newspapers. He would write letters to the papers, only he prides himself on never having written to the papers. He's conceited about it. That's what saves us endless humiliation. Mother thinks the world's a very distressing place, and the latest sort of girls very top-heavy and reckless and...."

"I don't think they're very happy," urged Mrs. Mayne.

"Perhaps they're not. All the better. Perhaps something will come of it—unless they enjoy their unhappiness too much, as some of them do. She doesn't understand that there have been changes since she was a girl."

"Only too well." Mrs. Mayne showed spirit.

"Well, she doesn't sympathise with them. She doesn't realise her standards don't apply to to-day. She's absolutely——"

"I'm sure I'm very faulty," agreed Mrs. Mayne, almost approvingly. Edgar laughed at his mother's unquenchable power to discomfit Claudia, and the two exchanged a glance.

"As for Edgar," proceeded Claudia, "he's quite hopeless. I bring friends here, and he thinks they're awful. So they are—he's quite right. But I shouldn't know they were awful if he didn't point it out. That's the disastrous consequences of bringing people here. Edgar says nothing about them at all, and so he stimulates my corrosive faculty. He'll drive me to having surreptitious friends."

Patricia's nose was a little in the air.

"I don't think he's very human," she said.

"You see?" Claudia looked in triumph at her brother. To Patricia, she continued. "The trouble about him is, he's a good man. He's old-fashioned. He has principles. It's a nuisance when a man has principles. He was brought up to think it was the thing to be decent and honourable, and so on. He doesn't live in our age at all, when everybody's trying hard to be wicked and only half-succeeding."

"I know," agreed Patricia, relishing the irony but perceiving the truth of her new friend's analysis. "I think it's impossible for one generation to understand the next."

"Exactly. But the next can understand the one—like winking."

"I'm sure I'm very easy to understand," said Mrs. Mayne. "Edgar isn't. I've never understood him. Or, for that matter, Claudia, although she's my own daughter."

"You know too much about me to understand me, mother," cried Claudia. "That's true, isn't it, Edgar? Too many things, I mean."

"It's certainly ingenious," agreed Edgar, quietly. He had hitherto been listening in silence to the debate, although all had been aware of his presence.

"What nonsense!" cried Mrs. Mayne.

Patricia thought: How nice and silly they are with each other! Her spirits rose yet higher. She felt that here the talk was the kind of talk—nonsensical and yet true—that she liked above every other kind. It was clear and light, without strain and without stereotyped slang. After so much that was quite otherwise, that aped smartness and achieved only repetition, this chatter gave her ease of heart as nothing else could have done. She smiled upon them all, impulsively, so that Edgar turned away to hide his passionate relief.

iii

"Dinner is served, ma'am," said the pretty maid, at the door. They all moved forward, leaving Percy at his toilet and losing Pulcinella en route.

Patricia, leading the way with Mrs. Mayne, saw the dining room with a friendly and interested eye; and as the chairs and sideboard were all of old mahogany, she supposed herself to be amid the relics of Mr. and Mrs. Mayne's early married life. The room was large and lofty, and the mahogany furniture suited it, so much did the shape and arrangement of everything accord. It was very different from the drawing room, where the note had been a light grey, with loose covers of flowered chintz upon the more comfortable seats and curtains of a shade warmer than that which otherwise prevailed. Here in the dining room the curtains were dark and the gas-shades mellow in tone. Everything was subdued. It was an "old" room, not at all what she would have expected from her quick imagination of Claudia's taste. Well, that was a puzzle the more. Involuntarily she shook her head. In this house the older people counted more heavily than she could have expected. The younger ones were not all-powerful. She guessed that the drawing room represented the farthest concession Mrs. Mayne would make to modernity; and it was already fifteen years out of date. She did not realise that it heralded the coming revival of Liberty in house-decoration.

Her insight was gone as quickly as it had come. Patricia hardly knew what had been her impression, so much less apt was she in thought than in intuitive knowledge. She was still charmed; but she knew that Mrs. Mayne also was in the habit of going her own way. It was a family habit. Patricia could not restrain a half-glance at the whiskered Mr. Mayne, who sat with such benignant fierceness at the head of the table. Was his pictorial ferocity merely a compensation? Or was his mildness the serenity of a dictator? Perhaps even Mr. Mayne.... She was deeply and childishly impressed. For an instant her self-assurance trembled. Patricia, of course, was unquestionably Patricia and in that respect unique; but could there possibly be other people—other real people—than Patricia in the world? It had seemed in that very uncomfortable instant as though there might be four others. With something like panic, she raised her spoon from the table.

iv

"What I should like to do," explained Claudia, "would be to re-shuffle the world a little. I could do it so nicely. I'd separate people under forty and people over forty. They could meet, and talk, and the people over forty wouldn't be made to feel they were quite useless; but they shouldn't have any power over the younger ones."

"It would be a splendid idea." Patricia was eagerly responsive.

"For a month," agreed Mrs. Mayne, with her natural irony.

"For always," firmly insisted Claudia. "Oh, you'd see a change."

"Forty in years?" asked Edgar. "Isn't that rather arbitrary?"

"I didn't mean I'd destroy them. Only separate them."

Edgar laughed a little.

"I believe you'd have a reactionary 'left' even then," he said, agreeably. "And a revolutionary 'right,' too. And another thing, Claudia ... you don't take into account the fact that some quite young people are obscurantist. When you think of young people you always think of yourself. Never of Johnny Rix or Daphne Petton...."

"Oh, but they're awful! I'd expose them at birth!" declared Claudia.

Edgar was unconvinced. He shook his head.

"You can't be everywhere at once," he warned.

"Well, there's Miss Quin...."

"Two of you—against a multitude."

"You're hopelessly cynical, Edgar. Miss Quin, he's a Pyrrhonist, I find."

"Good gracious!" Patricia was astounded. "What's that?"

"Nothing. Simply nothing at all."

"Inhuman?" asked Patricia, hopefully.

"Perfectly. I forget whether it comes from a man or a place; but he doesn't believe in anything at all. It's a ghastly state of mind to be in."

"Really, Claudia; you're too sweeping," protested Mrs. Mayne. "Anybody would think Edgar wasn't the kindest and best——"

"Oh, ever so good. Good unbelievably. Kind.... Frightfully interested in the insect world of human beings. Considerate—as few men are considerate—to the poor creatures who live around him."

"And very tolerant of Claudia," pursued Mrs. Mayne, turning to Patricia. "Oh, dear, this fish is over-cooked, Rachel, and I particularly.... However, it's no good grumbling.... I hope you'll like it, my dear. We have a very good fishmonger, and a very good cook, too; but ... Edgar, I wish you'd speak for yourself. Claudia will give Miss Quin such a peculiar...."

"He doesn't care ..." Claudia looked across at her brother. "Do you?"

Patricia could tell that he did not care. He was quite unconcerned. A slight grimness came into her expression. She wished him less unconcerned. She would have liked to believe in Edgar's susceptibility to pain. As it was, he seemed invulnerable. Patricia turned once more to Claudia with great sympathy and friendliness.

"I think your idea's very attractive," she said. "About the division."

Mr. Mayne gave a short, rather sardonic laugh.

"Wine's corked," he remarked. "Take it away, Rachel. And bring another bottle. With the chill off. Properly. Not roasted...."

Patricia lost her head. A tremulous twitching seized the corners of her mouth. She tried to control herself, and became desperate in the effort. In another instant she felt that she must giggle. Fortunately there came a diversion which saved her.

"Miaow!" cried Percy, from outside the door.

"What a menagerie it is!" said Mr. Mayne, in a savage tone. "It's incredible! Let him in, let him in! Of course, it's the fish. I never knew a cat...." His voice, even in this protest, was very low. He spoke as hushedly as a man telling a tale of horror.

It was then that Patricia saw that behind his ferocious air Mr. Mayne could hardly restrain his own ridiculous laughter. She looked swiftly round the table, from one to the other, from Edgar, to whom her glance first went, to Claudia, at his side. All were smiling, as if good-naturedly and at something absurd. Uncontrollably she laughed a little, thankful to find that they were not even solemn. And as she did this Percy appeared. Patricia had a glimpse of brilliant eyes and a huge waving tail which stood high above Percy's body as he made a leisurely entrance.

v

"Do you go to the theatre much, Miss Quin? My husband and I sometimes go, but it always seems to me that it's only an excuse for going out to dinner and for dressing up and seeing crowds of expensively-dressed people who are enjoying the same experience. I'm really much happier at home with a book. Although the books nowadays don't seem to be as interesting as they were. They're not very amusing. Very clever, I suppose, telling us all about our thoughts—which I'm sure we never have—and about young men and girls who seem to me to be very disagreeable and morbid and get themselves into sad trouble about things that don't happen to any of our friends. Do you like them?"

"I'm never quite sure," admitted Patricia. "They are very clever, of course."

"I wonder if cleverness is a good thing. Is it, Edgar?"

"Very good thing, mother," said Edgar, obediently, as if he had been thinking of something else.

"He doesn't think so!" declared Claudia. "Nor do I. It's only self-consciousness."

Mrs. Mayne appeared to digest the information. Unchecked, she thoughtfully continued:

"People are self-conscious, of course. Even I notice that. Of course, I'm old; and so I take an interest in what other people are doing. But I don't think I was ever any different. I'm sure I'm not always thinking about myself or my own affairs, which is all that seems to engross most of the people Claudia brings to the house. They seem rather peculiar. I'm not always saying that the young ones don't understand me——"

"It wouldn't be true," interjected Claudia. "It would be absurd."

"I think it might be true. But we hear nothing at all from Claudia, from morning to night, but the great disadvantages of young people; and their wisdom, and foresight; and——"

"Mother!"

An extremely mischievous smile appeared upon Mrs. Mayne's face. With her white hair and clear complexion, and in her rather high-cut dress of amber-coloured silk, she looked, when she smiled, ageless. She was a match for her daughter. Behind that rambling speech was a brain as acute and as teasing in its workings as anything Claudia could show; and Mrs. Mayne had the advantage over Claudia that her ideas were inflexible, while her daughter's were undisciplined and often wholly undetermined. Claudia resumed:

"I think you ought to know, Miss Quin, that mother's very unscrupulous. I mean, you must have noticed it for yourself; but you're so nice that perhaps you may not have let yourself think it. Father and I are the only people in this house who are scrupulous. We're very just. Edgar's pretty awful. But mother's unscrupulousness passes all bounds. I have this evening said a few words about young people, but that's because of something Edgar was saying earlier in the evening. He said you were a young woman, as though that conveyed anything at all. He was asked to describe you; and he said that."

"Oh, more than that," interpolated Edgar. "Surely."

"That was the principal thing. I said: 'What sort of a young woman?' and mother admitted that 'young woman' sounded like a term of reproach. Which it certainly is. She admitted it."

Patricia looked across at Edgar with some resentment, but also with some pity. He was eating his dinner in tranquillity, and Patricia felt a sudden suppression of anger in her breast.

"After all," she said, quietly. "He's a 'young man,' I don't know which is more of a term of reproach. We can't help our age or our sex. But for some reason women cannot get men to think of them as human beings. Always, they're regarded as women, and never as individuals."

"I think it's because men are rather new to the idea that they are individuals, and because women also are rather self-conscious about it. They haven't had an individual life for very long. Don't you think so, Miss Quin?"

Patricia, recovering a little from her enthusiasm, shook her head, smiling as if with greater wisdom.

"I think it's because women are simply rather conceited," remarked Edgar, in a surprised tone. "The temptation to conceited men is to take them down a peg."

A jerk seemed to shake Patricia. So that was what he thought! She understood now the reason of her lack of sympathy with him. He was indifferent. He cared for nothing but his own egotism. In that he resembled other men, no doubt; but in his case the offence took an extreme form. He did not appreciate Patricia Quin! He thought her conceited. He did not take her seriously. It was unpardonable, since it showed invincible stupidity. But what did it matter, after all? Patricia decided suddenly that she did not like him, that she had never liked him. When she looked at Edgar she could tell that such a man, so free from human weakness, and so incapable of appreciating anything which did not accord with his prejudices, would never be able to inspire real affection.

vi

After dinner a number of Claudia's friends came either unexpectedly or upon some casual invitation from Claudia. All were young men and women of refined tastes; and for a short time during their restless incursion there was a good deal of chatter. Patricia found herself not quite so much at home as she had been. She wished it had not been thought necessary—if that were indeed the case—for others to be invited. She felt so much older than Claudia's friends, so much superior to them in intelligence and knowledge of the world. They produced a superficial air of bustle and jollity; but it was all so naÏve as to be tiresome and stupid. Claudia was different. She at least had brains and high spirits. She also had vitality. But the others were so many boys and girls, and not of the kind of boy and girl that Patricia had recently begun to find amusing. These had no spice of danger about them; and Patricia had developed of late a new craving for just this spice. The girls were good suburban girls; the boys good suburban boys. Not one of them seemed to have a lurking devil. Quickly the party became what Patricia had feared it would be. It became insipid. Mrs. Mayne, from even the teasing and mischievous old lady of the dinner, grew into such a woman as her placid appearance would have indicated. Edgar and his father both disappeared, the former to return after not more than half-an-hour, during which—as he supposed that Patricia would be amusingly employed—he had cleared off some arrears of work. If it had not been for Claudia, Patricia's spirits would deeply have been sunk into boredom.

But at last the evening took a turn. The visitors, having stayed an hour, went as suddenly as they had come. Supper brought her once more within the circle of the Maynes; and she and Claudia and Edgar were at a table together. Edgar seemed preoccupied; but nothing could check Claudia's high spirits. She and her mother sparred with considerable spirit. Patricia delighted in the happy relationship. She found herself as the evening advanced recovering all the zest that she had lost on the coming of the juvenile visitors. Called upon to do so, she even gave her impressions of those who had called, and during this period she could not help glancing at Edgar to see whether he was amused at her comments. To her chagrin, Edgar remained serious. Although he smiled, his expression was grave. He was not attending. Patricia hardened. Such neglect chilled her, so unusual was it. Swiftly her resentment at his implied belief in her conceitedness returned and increased. It was not known to her that during his absence from the room Edgar had discovered something which had given him a great shock. She judged only by her own egocentric knowledge, and she accordingly misinterpreted his mood. Only to Edgar, therefore, was Patricia's manner at all cold. But he presently shook off whatever had been the matter which had made him thoughtful, and as he became animated Patricia was lured farther and farther from her grievance, until at last it was for the time altogether forgotten.

By then it was eleven o'clock, and the evening was ended. After warm exchanges of kind expressions between herself and Claudia, and after a further invitation from Mrs. Mayne, Patricia found herself walking through the dark streets by Edgar's side.

"I'm very glad I came," she told him naÏvely. "I think Claudia's splendid."

"You were rather afraid, weren't you?" Edgar asked.

"I'm always afraid of meeting somebody new. I feel at a disadvantage. I'm afraid of meeting people cleverer than myself."

"Oh, Claudia isn't that," she heard him say. Patricia's eyes opened in the safe darkness. Oho! she wonderingly said to herself. That did not sound much like an attempt to discourage a conceited young woman. How strange he was!

"I think she is." A very subdued voice conveyed the disclaimer. Edgar made no reply. Patricia, who believed him incapable of inspiring affection, felt a remarkable little flood of liking fill her heart. What a peculiar effect Edgar had upon her. He made her feel like a very small girl, much younger than himself, much weaker and sillier and less splendid than usual, but in no way distressed by the sensation. Childishly, there darted into Patricia's mind the wish that she had also possessed a brother—a brother something like Edgar, who could understand what was said to him, who did not all the time make demands, who was safe and sure and reliable.

A sigh shook her. It was so light as to be imperceptible to her companion. Her eyes filled with tears. At times in Patricia's conquering life there came instants when she would have given the world to rest quite quietly upon some such strong human support. Moments of loneliness sometimes assailed her, when a sustaining hand would have been of all things the most welcome. She did not feel lonely with Edgar—only happy and at ease. She was now very happy indeed. Then the moment's mood passed, and she was once again alert, and, immediately afterwards, troubled by another thought. She did not know that she was hiding her heart even from herself.

vii

The walk from the Maynes' house was an affair of perhaps half-an-hour. Their course lay almost directly south; but the intersection of the streets was imperfect, so that they had occasionally to take sharp turns. It was a fine starry night, and the stars seemed to yellow the lamps which at regular intervals shed very definitely restricted rays into the darkness. Tall houses stood erect upon each side of every road, and every now and then the walkers passed loitering couples or other pedestrians. Very few people, however, were in the streets; for the night, although serene, was chilly and therefore untempting.

Patricia could see the lamps winking in the distance, and whenever she came into that little glow which surrounded each of them she had a curious sense of her own physical appearance, as though she could see herself. She walked well, and enjoyed the swinging motion. She felt strangely at peace, and spoke without effort. And then suddenly, when they were close to a lamppost and could see all around them faintly illuminated, two other people—a man and a girl—coming from the opposite direction, were simultaneously within the circle of light. A quick greeting passed, and the parties were once more separated, lost in the immediate darkness.

Neither Edgar nor Patricia spoke—Patricia because a shock had gone straight to her heart and left her breathless. The two who had thus unexpectedly emerged and disappeared in that silent moment were Harry and Rhoda Flower. The shock had been like a dagger in Patricia's heart. All her talk ceased. She felt that all her happiness was extinguished. She continued to walk by Edgar's side; but it was as one numbed and bewildered by a tragic happening. They were both very silent for the remainder of the journey, all the ease of their companionship destroyed.

At parting Patricia kept her betraying face half turned from Edgar, and stayed only for the briefest and coldest "Good night, and thank you," before setting her key to the door and slipping into the house. But Edgar had not failed to see that she was quite colourless, so that he too had something to think about upon his return journey.