"I wish I'd known you were coming," Edgar said, rather lamely.
"I was told you'd be here." Patricia was perhaps roguish. "I've been feeling that I must have been rather silly.... I didn't thank you...."
"Oh, no.... I'd been thinking...." Edgar broke off.
"I met ... Mr. Rosenberg at Amy Roberts's the night after the party, and he asked me then. Amy Roberts was at school with me."
"Is she ... some sort of artist? Forgive me...." He saw that Patricia was laughing; but it was at a swift association of his stumbling enquiry with the monstrosity which stood upon Amy's easel. "I'm altogether ignorant of painting and reputations." Edgar could not have expressed the curious happiness which pervaded him at the sight of Patricia's laughing face. The new curve of her cheeks in laughter, and the poise of her head, were all delicious to him. Some reflection of his feeling must have appeared in his eyes; for she sobered almost responsive to his admiration.
"I don't think anybody knows her work," explained Patricia. Something like sorrow transformed her face. She was recalling Jack and his miserable confessions. "Mr. Rosenberg was praising a picture she's now painting when he was at the studio."
"You like it yourself?"
Patricia looked frankly back at him. There was something in Edgar which invited the truth. She felt strongly tempted to tell him the whole story of Jack. How strange that she should feel at once so intimately friendly!
"I don't know," she admitted. Then, quite astonished at herself, she went breathlessly on: "You see, I don't know anything about pictures; and I want to seem to know. It isn't pretence ... or not altogether. I want to understand. But Amy's so difficult, and you can't ask her to tell you why something that's very ugly, from one point of view, is really good from another. I don't mean that I like sentimental pictures. I hate them. But you need educating to appreciate the sort of things Amy does."
Unconsciously, Patricia had drawn the attention of Monty, at the other side of the round table. He had missed the opening words of her speech; but he had heard the conclusion.