"I hate it!" acknowledged Patricia. "It's devil-begotten!"
"Edgar's work has made happiness for everybody in this house. Without it, we should be nowhere. We shouldn't exist. But Edgar's the one who gets least out of his work. We're all Old Men of the Sea on his shoulders. I've never thought of that before, by the way. I suppose you didn't happen to think of it, by any chance, and put it into my head?"
"Oh, no," said Patricia naïvely. "You see, I don't ... don't know Edgar very well."
Claudia gave her a quick side-long glance.
"He knows you pretty well, doesn't he?" she answered. "But of course that's different."
That was the third shock Patricia had received that afternoon from Claudia. She turned as if to answer; but Claudia was moving across the room, and Patricia was left to draw her own inference. The remark had almost seemed to accuse her of injustice to Edgar. And what beyond?
v
They had dined, and were back again in the tranquil sitting-room, all cosily round the fire, with the lights soft and the fire an enormous red glow. Patricia was very subdued. She was happy and unhappy at the same time. The contrast of this evening, and this quiet fireside, with the previous evening's hot and tempting excitement, was impressive; it shook her. She knew that this was in some way better than the other; she felt herself yielding to it upon the one hand as she had done upon the other to passion; and as she knew and remembered, she became confusedly restless. She wondered if the Maynes always spent their evenings quietly, and in such blessed and unendurable tranquillity.
"I couldn't bear to," she thought, with the tears starting into her eyes. "I'm wicked. I must have excitement. I couldn't stand it. I should scream, and make a dash—like Amy running for the train!"
But as if Claudia had guessed what were Patricia's thoughts, she said: