ii
So the matter stood, and Patricia was drowned in bewilderment and shame for as long as her first mood lasted. But then young buoyancy revived. On the third night she slept, and her dreams were sweeter. On awakening she was still unhappy; but as she lay in bed and her little thoughts darted about like shadows of birds she had suddenly an overwhelming fit of arrogance.
"Pooh!" cried Patricia, violently throwing back the bedclothes. She stepped out of bed and stood there, yawning, with her hands clasped behind her head, and her cheeks resting lightly against her raised arm. Downstairs Lucy had begun her strong clouting of the furniture. The morning was still grey. And as she stood there Patricia caught a movement in the mirror by the window, and was drawn across the room to it. In the mirror's depths she saw her own sleepy face; her little fall of hair, her soft cheeks, "two witch's eyes above a cherub's mouth," and the beautiful line of her neck. "I'm pretty!" she said to herself. "I'm pretty, and I know it. I've got taste. I've got brains. Pooh!"
And with that she went back to bed, to await the arrival of Lucy with the hot water. Wave after wave of arrogance passed through her in healthy reaction to her earlier despair. "I'm better off than Amy," she thought. "I'm cleverer than she is—not such an idiot. Rhoda ... poor thing! Poor thing to be known to be in love, and by a man who doesn't care for you at all. Unless he made it up! I wonder!" Did men pretend sometimes, as girls did, that they were loved? She expected so. She had known a girl who thought all men were in love with her, who thought a man must either love her or dislike her. Well, Patricia did not believe in that assumption. She admitted candidly that, although they seemed to like her, all the men she knew were not in love with herself. "It's very funny," she said, ruminating. "People in love.... I suppose there are all sorts of ways of being in love. There's Harry's way, which is just self-indulgence. There's Jack Penton's way, which is silly devotion to somebody who doesn't care that! There's ... oh, there's lots of ways. And my way—or my thought of way.... Perhaps it's only.... Pooh! If I don't love a man I needn't marry him. You can do all sorts of things, if you aren't one of these silly little creatures who give in. I'd live with him—if I loved him. I don't love Harry: that's why I wouldn't...." This, however, was bravado; and she passed on, ignoring the gross lapse into indelicate falsehood. "But he'd have to love me better than himself. That's it! I've got to be loved; not just wanted. I've got to be needed, and adored, and passionately wanted, and respected, and understood. Then I should be sure, and then I'd give back love for love—full measure. I'm too good for this ordinary love—this sort of 'affair' that Harry likes; or the marriage that's like taking a situation—'permanency.' I'm too good for it. I need half-a-dozen husbands to do me justice. I don't have to take what I can get. I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin!"
She was filled with supreme egotism.