iii

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

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

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

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

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

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

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