v

They had dined, and were back again in the tranquil sitting-room, all cosily round the fire, with the lights soft and the fire an enormous red glow. Patricia was very subdued. She was happy and unhappy at the same time. The contrast of this evening, and this quiet fireside, with the previous evening's hot and tempting excitement, was impressive; it shook her. She knew that this was in some way better than the other; she felt herself yielding to it upon the one hand as she had done upon the other to passion; and as she knew and remembered, she became confusedly restless. She wondered if the Maynes always spent their evenings quietly, and in such blessed and unendurable tranquillity.

"I couldn't bear to," she thought, with the tears starting into her eyes. "I'm wicked. I must have excitement. I couldn't stand it. I should scream, and make a dash—like Amy running for the train!"

But as if Claudia had guessed what were Patricia's thoughts, she said:

"This is the first evening Edgar and I have both been at home for about six weeks—seven weeks—except that night when you came to dinner." Patricia sighed wearily, her eyes closing in despair at the sense of guilt which oppressed her. There was a moment's silence. In the middle of it, Claudia rose. "Oh, by the way, Edgar. Patricia's hard up. She wants to ask your advice. I promised you'd help her."

"No, no. I don't ..." began Patricia, and looked round for support. But Claudia was no longer in the room. The door was closed. She was alone with Edgar, as one imprisoned; and everything Edgar stood for in her mind was hostile to passion and folly and hot-mouthed temptation.

She could not bring herself to meet his glance. She could look no higher than the shoulders of his dark grey tweed suit. His small and well-shaped feet were opposite her own. He lay back in a chair which was the counterpart of the one in which Patricia sat. Edgar, the maker of this home, who breathed restraint and clear understanding and ridicule of emotional recklessness. She was ashamed and tongue-tied. But one grey tweed suit is very like another, and when Edgar spoke she could not help quickly glancing up, with resentment of his unsusceptibility to the charm which she knew herself to be capable of exercising. He was very brown, and his brown eyes were very honest, and his lips were very clearly and pleasantly moulded, as though he smiled easily. He was smiling now.

"I expect you'd better, hadn't you?" he asked, with perfect gravity and good-humour.

There came into Patricia's heart a trust which was rare, and an irresistible call to candour. It annihilated her resentment, her hostile clinging to the memory of Monty and the fever in her blood which he represented.

"I didn't mean to ask your advice," she said, looking straight at Edgar. "You couldn't advise me. You couldn't understand how I'm placed."

"Of course I couldn't," agreed Edgar. "Unless you'd tell me. Of course, you could do that."

"Are you laughing at me?" demanded Patricia, with sharp anger. Then, the question unsolved, she went on. "It's quite true. I'm coming to the end of my money; and I don't know what to do. I'm not making any money just now: only spending it. And I ought to work."

"What sort of work?" asked Edgar. "What can you do?"

The colour filled Patricia's cheeks. She was again ashamed before him, with the same feeling of shackled personality.

"I'm afraid, nothing," she said, speaking at first with a sort of dry impertinence, and afterwards with rather wistful humility. "Nothing that you would regard as anything. I've been writing. I want to write. I think I've got talent. But ... I'm only a beginner. You see, I was in an office during the War; and I had a little money when my uncle died; and I've sold a few of the things I've written."

"What d'you mean by nothing that I should regard as anything?" inquired Edgar. Patricia remained silent, the colour slowly rising, and her heart frozen. She could not withstand his personality, but she was fighting against its approach to herself. "You want to keep on the life of a woman of leisure!" he proceeded, smiling again. He changed his attitude, sitting more upright in his chair. "It's awfully hard to go back to drudgery."

Patricia's heart leapt—at the thought, and at his affectionate kindness.

"I simply couldn't," she cried breathlessly.

"I'm sure you could. You could do anything you chose." There came from those steady eyes a look that was full of encouragement, of sympathy. To Edgar there was no question. He trusted her. It was he who evoked her quality. Patricia found herself agitated in self-abhorrence.

"O-oh!" she cried, in pain. "If you knew...." The painful colour again flooded her cheeks.

"Suppose you tell me," begged Edgar.

"No." Patricia stared into the fire, her hands clasped upon the arm of her chair. She was driven to defiance that shocked herself. "I couldn't. And you couldn't understand. There are all sorts of things in my nature that you couldn't understand. You ... you've got a cold will. You don't shrink and waver. You're not impulsive and ...."

Edgar rose from his chair, his hands in his pockets. He stood looking away from Patricia, as if in deep thought. At last he said:

"Do you resent my will, that you call it cold? Why should you do that? It's unjust. I've no wish but to help you. As a matter of fact, I haven't a cold will. I'm obstinate; and I shrink and waver. But I don't shrink and waver once I've made up my mind. I made up my mind some time ago that I loved you and wanted to marry you, and to help you; and so there's no more hesitation about that."

Patricia was astounded. She turned sharply, her lips parted in amazement. He was in earnest. His words made her heart race. Then anger came—and again shame—and an emotion which she did not analyse.

"Marry? When.... Don't be ridiculous!" cried Patricia.

Edgar looked down at her, apparently as grave and unmoved as before, although his voice was changed.

"Why not?" he asked. "I'm in love with you. Will you marry me?"

Patricia laughed, almost savagely. She was deeply moved, and her present emotion, in conflict with all she had been feeling so recently, made her voice loud and angry, as if she were afraid.

"Love me ... I don't feel that you love me," she said with bitterness. "Something quite different. I feel that you're interested in me——"

"Well, I should hope so!" cried Edgar, apparently amazed. "Isn't that essential?"

"And I don't love you," said Patricia, vehemently. "I don't!" She was still emphatically protesting. "I respect you. I think you're ... I think you're everything that's kind and ... inhuman." She was trying to remain calm, to equal his restraint with her own; and she was failing. The failure gave her a passionate sense of inferiority to him that was intolerable. Suddenly she began to cry, her hands outstretched helplessly before her. "It's no good.... It's no good!" she sobbed through her tears, her little face distorted with the torment of her heart. "I'm ... an awful ... beast!"

Edgar took the outstretched hands in his own, dropping to one knee in order to do so. He was so gentle, so extraordinarily inviting of trust and sincerity and goodness, that Patricia's head came forward for the merest instant, and touched his shoulder, as if there to find relief from her own suffering.

"Do think of it," he urged, his face so near her own, so comprehending, so full of love. "Patricia ...."

She rose in anguish, beating her hands together.

"You think it's so simple. You think it's a question of talking and persuading. You don't know what love is," she said, in this violent, strangled voice. And then, as if indignantly, she added: "Nor do I! Nor do I! I couldn't. I don't know how to love. I'm too much of a beast. I'm too selfish and ugly-hearted! And if you knew anything about my nature you wouldn't want to love me. You'd hate me." And with that she began to dry her eyes, staring away from him, and trembling.

"You're so silly to talk of being wicked," Edgar said. "How are you wicked?" A very faint tinge of humour came into his voice at her persistent remorse. "What's your particular form of wickedness? Don't be so vague, my dear. You'd enjoy it more if you were thoroughly wicked. Let me help you not to be wicked!"

Patricia made no answer. When he repeated her name she ignored him. In a minute, as if she were trying to be conversational, she went on, still in a dreary, hopeless tone:

"Isn't it funny. I've been coming across ... all sorts of people's ideas of love ... lately—both girls and men;—and they're all of them different. They're none of them ... mine. And I must have my way of love!"

Edgar was also upon his feet, facing her.

"What is your way of love?" he asked. "It's my way, too. The others aren't love. They're phantasms." But Patricia would not speak. Only a little tearful smile, as at some baffling secret knowledge which he could never share, played upon her lips and in her eyes. The smile, as well as her silence, provoked his complaint. "There's a sort of sublime cheek about you," said Edgar, wonderingly, "that isn't likely to be equalled. I asked you to marry me. You ramble on about other people's ideas of love. The ideas of other people don't interest me."

"Exactly!" cried Patricia, thrown back into anger and shame and resistance. "That's exactly why nobody could ever possibly love you. You're only interested in your own ideas."

"They're not enough, my dear. I want your love."

"I could never love you," said Patricia, trying to speak coolly, and remaining unconvincing in her childish emphasis. "I could never love anybody so ... so bitterly inhuman!"

"Well, won't you try?" he urged, puzzled at her quarrelsomeness and unable to reconcile it with the indifference he had feared. "You like me, don't you?"

Patricia shook her head, unexpectedly.

"No!" she cried. "I don't like you. I hate you. I shall always hate you. You make me feel such a cad!"

And with that she left him, going in search of Claudia. Edgar, his heart beating, and his temper ruffled, remained standing as he had stood during the latter part of their interview. He did not see her again that night. She had left the house by the time Claudia returned to the room, and brother and sister averted their eyes from each other at their first encounter.