"Nothing's been happening. That's just it. I can't paint. I never could paint. It's all ridiculous. Ridiculous!" The words were blurted out in a breathless voice of pain. "I'm in hell!"
And with that Amy began to cry. Patricia put an arm round her, and felt the poor creature sobbing. But no tears came; the sobs were long drawn and agonised; and Amy could not weep.
"And nobody's come near you!" murmured Patricia, stricken with conscience. "Oh, you poor thing. You poor thing!" Amy jerked herself free, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief that had been soiled with paint. She stood there all puckered, terribly hostile to consolation.
"Don't!" she choked. "I can't stand being pawed! All the damned fools in the world have come. Damn them! Grinning and ... Damn!" She began to blow her nose and to wipe her eyes, looking inexpressibly forlorn in her little linen dress without a waist. It was a piteous sight. An old woman stood there, facing bitter knowledge. Patricia could see that Amy's face was swollen with crying. She was evidently in a state of wretched misery, and yet what could be done? Nothing! Desiring pity, comfort, sympathy, Amy could yield herself to none of these, and her hysterical scorn for them was devastating. There was a long silence, awkward and increasingly embarrassed. Patricia stared downward, biting her lip, oppressed with the knowledge of her helplessness. When she spoke she could hear her own words, and her false voice, and the emptiness of her emotion.
"You'd better go away for a holiday," she suggested. "Go down to Cornwall."
"No." Amy jerked with impatient unhappiness. She was like a desperate animal that snarls at a rescuer. "I don't want to do anything. I don't want to see anybody." She controlled herself with a fierce effort, moving a few steps this way and that, and smoking furiously, until the cigarette was glowing and burning her lips. For a time during this paroxysm of fury there was silence; and then Amy went on in a curious dry disinterested voice: "Sit down, Patricia. Tell me what you've been doing. No, I'm all right. I'll stand up. I can't bear to keep still. Got a cigarette?" She lighted the fresh one from her burning stump, in the same grievous way leaning against the mantelpiece and again starting erect with nervous lack of self-control; and every now and then she was shaken by a sob. Without waiting for Patricia's narrative, Amy went on viciously: "That brute Felix has been spiteful about me—and I don't care. I don't care! I'd like to kill him—all of them. All these grinning apes.... I know I can't paint. I'm no good at it. I never shall be any good. Well? What's it to do with them? They're all as glad ... because I'm a woman. That's what it is. What it comes down to is naked sex jealousy. I know. I've known it all the time. And I've gone on, pretending to believe it, pretending I was taken in. I wasn't. They thought I didn't know they laughed at me. Well, I did. And it's I who laugh at them. I despise them. I'm no good; but they're no good, either! And I've told them so. There's that...."
Her voice had grown louder and more hysterical as she progressed. Patricia stood rooted, quite overcome by this torrential violence of anger and chagrin and revelation. But Amy's voice changed again. Almost beseechingly, she turned to her friend.
"But what am I to do, Patricia? I've spent all this money—pounds and pounds of it—and worked and worked and worked; and kept on and on, hoping ... refusing to see." Then, suddenly again out of all control, she shouted. "And it's no good! D'you see? It's no good!" The suppressed rage in her voice was as if saturated with the bitter tears which she could not shed. The tears started to Patricia's eyes in sympathy. She was suffused with conscience-stricken loyalty.
"Where's Jack?" she demanded, fiercely. "What's he doing?"
"Jack!" It was almost a scream. "God! I hate the sight of him. Hate the sound of his rusty voice."