Patricia allowed him to wander on. She was smiling.
"I like to hear you talk," she said. "It's agreeable. It's all irrelevant, and verbose; and if you think I'm to be threatened into marrying you, you're mistaken. Can't you see it would murder my vanity? But I haven't anything to give you. You'd be giving to me all the time. I could have given something they wanted to Harry and Monty, and when it came to the point I wouldn't give it, because they couldn't give me anything I wanted in exchange. You can give me a lot. You can make my life worth living. But I can't give you anything, because you don't want it."
"We'll get on to Winchester now," said Edgar, with studied—even ostentatious—patience. "Because I want to take you back to London to tea with some friends of ours—Olivia and Peter Stephens."
"Stephens?" said Patricia. "Aren't they ... aren't they the married people who are happy?" She became thoughtful. The car began to move; but she was unconscious of everything but her own darting intuitions. Amy ... the happy young lovers ... what had Amy said? For an instant full memory of the conversation eluded her. Then at last. "Why take me there?" she asked.
"It'll do you good to meet some real people for a change," said Edgar. "Happy people. People who haven't got their heads cluttered with sophistication and egotism. People who aren't sterile sensation-rakers, and lascivious fiddlers with their senses."
Again Patricia was lost in thought. His rather heated tone was a natural discouragement to her. Suddenly she gave an exclamation.
"Oh, babies!" she said. She did not open her lips again until the car arrived in Winchester.
viii
They had lunched, and were again upon the road; and the bare hedges showed Patricia lands that stretched full of wood and copse and meadow into the farthest distance. From a high place upon a common, where Edgar had halted for the sake of the glorious panorama, she could see Hampshire extending upon the one hand and Surrey upon the other. She was very happy now, but her heart a little ached. It was the breeze, perhaps, that chilled; or a return of her old painful feeling of loneliness.... But as Patricia thought that, she knew suddenly what she wanted, and Edgar knew it also, for he put his arm round her.
"My old sweet," he said. "Never think I don't love you,—as much as any Harry or Monty; and with the same warmth. I do. You're everything to me."