She rose in anguish, beating her hands together.
"You think it's so simple. You think it's a question of talking and persuading. You don't know what love is," she said, in this violent, strangled voice. And then, as if indignantly, she added: "Nor do I! Nor do I! I couldn't. I don't know how to love. I'm too much of a beast. I'm too selfish and ugly-hearted! And if you knew anything about my nature you wouldn't want to love me. You'd hate me." And with that she began to dry her eyes, staring away from him, and trembling.
"You're so silly to talk of being wicked," Edgar said. "How are you wicked?" A very faint tinge of humour came into his voice at her persistent remorse. "What's your particular form of wickedness? Don't be so vague, my dear. You'd enjoy it more if you were thoroughly wicked. Let me help you not to be wicked!"
Patricia made no answer. When he repeated her name she ignored him. In a minute, as if she were trying to be conversational, she went on, still in a dreary, hopeless tone:
"Isn't it funny. I've been coming across ... all sorts of people's ideas of love ... lately—both girls and men;—and they're all of them different. They're none of them ... mine. And I must have my way of love!"
Edgar was also upon his feet, facing her.
"What is your way of love?" he asked. "It's my way, too. The others aren't love. They're phantasms." But Patricia would not speak. Only a little tearful smile, as at some baffling secret knowledge which he could never share, played upon her lips and in her eyes. The smile, as well as her silence, provoked his complaint. "There's a sort of sublime cheek about you," said Edgar, wonderingly, "that isn't likely to be equalled. I asked you to marry me. You ramble on about other people's ideas of love. The ideas of other people don't interest me."
"Exactly!" cried Patricia, thrown back into anger and shame and resistance. "That's exactly why nobody could ever possibly love you. You're only interested in your own ideas."
"They're not enough, my dear. I want your love."
"I could never love you," said Patricia, trying to speak coolly, and remaining unconvincing in her childish emphasis. "I could never love anybody so ... so bitterly inhuman!"