vi

Edgar went straight out of the house after he had left Claudia in the breakfast room. He could not at first understand why he felt so extraordinarily miserable as he walked along the street; but he awoke to find his own exclamation, "God forbid!" dinning in his ears. What if the subject Claudia had introduced were something to do with Patricia! His mind was instantly alight. The man distraught by love will believe almost anything evil of the inscrutable mistress—that she is a devil, harlot, liar, angel, fool.... Edgar was not so extreme; but he was filled with that wild electricity of emotion which accompanies the throwing into a combustible mind of any such suggestion. His day was spoilt because of this one frantic thought. There was no pity here for Patricia; no understanding; only the fierce blaze of uncontrollable mental agitation. His heat cooled, of course; but the effect of it remained. Edgar knew that those calm doubtings and considerations of the night and morning were but the shadows of his real doubtings. Of consideration he had none: only a fire that smouldered, and that looked and felt like coldness. But he did not dare to recall the subject of the morning talk, or Claudia's dissociation of it from the discussion of Patricia's nature. To have done so would have brought him to a pitch of unmanageable fear. As it was, the thought, although suppressed, lay full of secret life.