Patricia was as vehement as he. She was carried right out of her young ignorance, as she often was, by emotion; and she sat looking at him with a glowing face, her eyes melting in their sympathy. The lines upon that poor grey forehead and round those troubled eyes hurt her, and the bitter droop of Jack's thin dark lips made its direct appeal to her heart, even while that heart sank inevitably at the prospect of unhappiness in life which lay for all to see in front of this bewildered lover. It was at this moment that Amy and Monty, both aware of tension in that other corner of the studio, turned and contemplated their companions. Very strange impressions were recorded by each at such manifest intimacy between the two who were sitting absorbed by the fire.
ii
Upon Monty's side there was a considerable increase of interest in Patricia. It was as though he addressed to himself an appreciative "Ah!" at the sight of a young woman less simple than she appeared. The ideal sport, for him, was to be obtained from freshness that had savoir faire behind it. He began to relish this girl. As he scrutinised her his lids were low, and he watched for some betraying gesture of crude sophistication as only an expert could watch. None came. He was the more intrigued. His companion was less passive.
"Well, you two," cried Amy. "Jack's the perfect philistine, of course." She came to the fire, resting her hand upon the mantelpiece, and holding a cigarette forward in her lips for Monty to light. She spoke thereafter with the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and the smoke drifting up into her eyes. "You can explain a thing to him in words of one syllable for hours on end, and at the end he just says, 'Well, I know what I like!' Doesn't turn a hair. Not a swerve. Isn't it marvellous?"
"Why pretend?" suavely demanded Monty. "A great deal of talk about the arts is humbug. It's created by the apparent necessity for saying something."
"I agree with you," snorted Jack, who was still ruffled by the recent exploration of his inexhaustible troubles, and who therefore was in danger of being rather less than polite.
"I felt sure you would, my dear Penton," lazily responded Monty. "What we need is standardised criticism. Unfortunately, people are so perverse. They insist on having their own views."
"It's only a pretence," said Jack. "They're all other people's. Unless they're made up for the occasion, in which case they're nobody's."
"When you say one thing, and somebody else says the opposite, what happens?" asked Patricia, directly interrogating Monty, and feeling bold in the action.