"Monty was prepared to go up to two-thousand five-hundred," he said. "He's got a regal way of pensioning his mistresses. You might have made two-thousand five-hundred pounds, Patricia."
"He offered to marry me," answered Patricia, defiantly. "But he didn't really mean it, of course. It was only something to attract my attention."
"I was thinking," said Edgar, slowly. "Your lovers are rather a fine set of men, aren't they!"
"You think they're something to be conceited about?" retorted Patricia. "Edgar, don't you really think I'm rather wonderful!" It was apparently wistful; but only apparently so.
"I'm so concerned with my own marvellousness," he crudely answered, "that I can't spare time to admire yours."
"But Edgar, girls have to be admired," she said. "Look here: you've done something. You've achieved something. Can't you see that if you've never done anything you have to make up something to live for. If I loved you, and had no other ambition, I could live in your interests, as you want me to. But I can't play second fiddle—not yet—not until I've sown my wild oats. If I'm no good, then...."
Edgar turned round. If he observed the fiddler sowing wild oats he ignored the confusion.
"There's something in that," he said. "I don't want you to play second fiddle. You haven't made up your mind to marry me; but you've got a sense that you're going to ... that's so, isn't it?" There was a pause.
"I think so," answered Patricia at last, in a very quiet voice. "It seems inevitable. That is, if I'm to marry anybody at all. But I'm not ready to marry you."
"What you'd like to do is not to make up your mind. You'd like to go on as we are, being friends, until I'm tired of you and you are tired of me, and we can have disagreeable middle-ages of loneliness and regret. I don't care to waste our lives in that way. I admit that I'm not an ideal lover; but I've got other points, and you know them. You know that in some curious way you depend on me. You may not be in love with me; but no other man means as much to you, or will ever mean as much. If it's put to you that you either marry me or lose me, you'll marry me rather than lose me. But if you don't love me, it would be very wrong to marry me simply because you couldn't bear to lose me...."