vii
At the end of the evening, when they were in the car together, Patricia said:
"I feel sorry for Blanche Tallentyre; but I hate her."
"Well," replied Edgar. "Don't you think she may hate you, as well?"
Patricia did not speak. She was puzzled. She thought for some time before she answered him.
"I meant, I don't think Blanche Tallentyre can ever really have been ..." She paused.
"Young? Oh, I think ... I think perhaps you were more right about her than you knew," said Edgar.
"I found myself saying that," naïvely admitted Patricia. "I didn't mean to hurt her at all."
"No," answered Edgar. "That was the devil of it. You never do mean to hurt or to do wrong, do you?" He laughed, which showed Patricia that he was not finding fault with her. "But I pity anybody who tries to make you do right."
"Well, you see, I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin," said Patricia, as though that were an all-sufficient justification of any idiosyncrasy.
"Quite so." Edgar was silent in his turn. Yet he was shot through and through with an impulse either to kiss her or to strike her; and he continued methodically to drive his car through the after-theatre traffic as though no such possibilities could ever have occurred to him. Patricia, wholly unconscious that he was anything but the quiet and composed creature whom she saw, basked in her delusion.
"I should think you must be an awfully good friend," she impulsively said.
"Should you?" Edgar's tone was expressionless. He did not relax his attention to the traffic.
No more was said between them upon that subject.