And at that moment there was a loud call for him from the other end of the studio, and Monty left Patricia. She continued to sit quite still, while the brandy began slowly to have its effect. The blood stole back to her cheeks. She looked at her little hands, which lay together, clenched, in her lap, and slowly unclenched them, so that the knuckles were no longer white. The nails had left two or three pink marks in her palms, which gradually disappeared. The shuddering left her body, which was now quite inert. A dreadful sensation of staleness pervaded Patricia. Her head ached. Quietly, and as if by accident, Monty was near her again. He poured a little more brandy into her glass.
"Patricia's not very grand," she heard him whisper to another man. "See that she drinks this, will you?"
The other man, a stranger, drew up his chair, and sat near her, talking in a low voice while she drank the brandy. She could not understand what he said, but his voice was grateful. She smiled her thanks at him, and her attention wandered away to the groups in other parts of the studio, so loud, so closely resembling in appearance the groups which had been present on the occasion of her first visit to this studio.
So much had happened since that evening that she realised how changed she now was. It seemed to Patricia that she must have been a child then. She felt very old now, as if she were looking back, an old woman, upon days of happy ignorance. The noise did not echo sweetly in her ears as it had done. This was no longer an enchanted meeting-place for those who were wise and wonderful and superior to the rest of all human beings. She had seen so much, and felt so much, since she had first known them that the staleness which had come upon her this evening was diffused among the visitors. She felt them to be also stale, curious automata chattering to hide their emptiness and unhappiness, as she too might now chatter to combat the knowledge that she was weary and unable any longer to experience simple things with her old fresh delight.
A sigh shook Patricia. The feeling of sickness remained with her. And this stranger who tried vainly to distract her attention with idle speeches about things she did not understand and did not want to understand was no other than the rest. She could see his long hair and hear his thin light voice; and she was stirred by a contempt for all that these groups represented. But her contempt no longer arose from a sense that she was superior to the groups. For the first time she was sick at heart as well as in mind and body. She made no attempt to listen. She only felt tired and filled with distaste and the longing for quietude and sincerity. The crowd became vague. At first Patricia thought that she was again in danger of fainting; but she was immediately better, and able at last to hear what the man said. He was talking about the theatre, and was describing a play he had seen.
"Perfectly ghastly...." he was saying. "And all these suburbans were enjoying it with all their ears. A silly little fool of a girl, supposed to be extraordinarily charming; and saying and doing the most incredible things...."
ii
Patricia could never have understood that it was her state of mind alone which made these people distasteful to her. Any other crowd would have seemed equally empty and unprofitable. But she was sitting amid the noise sobered by her late excitement; and her reactions were so rapid that she was misconstruing a mood as a revelation. As she had hitherto over-valued herself, and then, by the mere plunge of her neuroticism, had undervalued every quality she had, she now felt aghast at the results of her own unreasoning wilfulness. She saw herself as a feather, tossed by every wind of inclination, veering, flying, without will. She was deeply shocked.
She thought of Harry; of Monty; of Edgar; and she was ashamed. There was no indignation towards Monty; only acid shame. She had been fascinated, tempted; she had been flattered and excited; and her vanity had betrayed her. When the reality had come she had awakened to the understanding that this fascinating sport with fire was a horror to her. She, who had thought herself so clever, and so experienced, was appalled at the very thing which she had supposed so fascinating. She felt like the little boy who coveted one of those big glass jars full of coloured liquid which still stand in the windows of small pharmacies; and who, when the water had been emptied, found himself possessed of a jar without beauty. Nothing could have been more bitter than the realisation that she was a fool who had not even the courage to pursue her folly to its end.
Patricia had played with the idea of love for Harry; and it had been shown to be empty. She hardly thought of him. Lightly, she had fallen in love with love. And then, tempted, she had enjoyed her sense of power over Monty. She had responded to him, encouraged him; and the result had been this evening's ignominious struggle. The bruises she had received had been not only those of the body; they had been bruises of her self-esteem, of the immaculate legend of Patricia Quin.