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!