"This is the first evening Edgar and I have both been at home for about six weeks—seven weeks—except that night when you came to dinner." Patricia sighed wearily, her eyes closing in despair at the sense of guilt which oppressed her. There was a moment's silence. In the middle of it, Claudia rose. "Oh, by the way, Edgar. Patricia's hard up. She wants to ask your advice. I promised you'd help her."
"No, no. I don't ..." began Patricia, and looked round for support. But Claudia was no longer in the room. The door was closed. She was alone with Edgar, as one imprisoned; and everything Edgar stood for in her mind was hostile to passion and folly and hot-mouthed temptation.
She could not bring herself to meet his glance. She could look no higher than the shoulders of his dark grey tweed suit. His small and well-shaped feet were opposite her own. He lay back in a chair which was the counterpart of the one in which Patricia sat. Edgar, the maker of this home, who breathed restraint and clear understanding and ridicule of emotional recklessness. She was ashamed and tongue-tied. But one grey tweed suit is very like another, and when Edgar spoke she could not help quickly glancing up, with resentment of his unsusceptibility to the charm which she knew herself to be capable of exercising. He was very brown, and his brown eyes were very honest, and his lips were very clearly and pleasantly moulded, as though he smiled easily. He was smiling now.
"I expect you'd better, hadn't you?" he asked, with perfect gravity and good-humour.
There came into Patricia's heart a trust which was rare, and an irresistible call to candour. It annihilated her resentment, her hostile clinging to the memory of Monty and the fever in her blood which he represented.
"I didn't mean to ask your advice," she said, looking straight at Edgar. "You couldn't advise me. You couldn't understand how I'm placed."
"Of course I couldn't," agreed Edgar. "Unless you'd tell me. Of course, you could do that."
"Are you laughing at me?" demanded Patricia, with sharp anger. Then, the question unsolved, she went on. "It's quite true. I'm coming to the end of my money; and I don't know what to do. I'm not making any money just now: only spending it. And I ought to work."
"What sort of work?" asked Edgar. "What can you do?"
The colour filled Patricia's cheeks. She was again ashamed before him, with the same feeling of shackled personality.