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.