To this letter there had been no answer. Harry, evidently, was lying low.
ii
So the matter stood, and Patricia was drowned in bewilderment and shame for as long as her first mood lasted. But then young buoyancy revived. On the third night she slept, and her dreams were sweeter. On awakening she was still unhappy; but as she lay in bed and her little thoughts darted about like shadows of birds she had suddenly an overwhelming fit of arrogance.
"Pooh!" cried Patricia, violently throwing back the bedclothes. She stepped out of bed and stood there, yawning, with her hands clasped behind her head, and her cheeks resting lightly against her raised arm. Downstairs Lucy had begun her strong clouting of the furniture. The morning was still grey. And as she stood there Patricia caught a movement in the mirror by the window, and was drawn across the room to it. In the mirror's depths she saw her own sleepy face; her little fall of hair, her soft cheeks, "two witch's eyes above a cherub's mouth," and the beautiful line of her neck. "I'm pretty!" she said to herself. "I'm pretty, and I know it. I've got taste. I've got brains. Pooh!"
And with that she went back to bed, to await the arrival of Lucy with the hot water. Wave after wave of arrogance passed through her in healthy reaction to her earlier despair. "I'm better off than Amy," she thought. "I'm cleverer than she is—not such an idiot. Rhoda ... poor thing! Poor thing to be known to be in love, and by a man who doesn't care for you at all. Unless he made it up! I wonder!" Did men pretend sometimes, as girls did, that they were loved? She expected so. She had known a girl who thought all men were in love with her, who thought a man must either love her or dislike her. Well, Patricia did not believe in that assumption. She admitted candidly that, although they seemed to like her, all the men she knew were not in love with herself. "It's very funny," she said, ruminating. "People in love.... I suppose there are all sorts of ways of being in love. There's Harry's way, which is just self-indulgence. There's Jack Penton's way, which is silly devotion to somebody who doesn't care that! There's ... oh, there's lots of ways. And my way—or my thought of way.... Perhaps it's only.... Pooh! If I don't love a man I needn't marry him. You can do all sorts of things, if you aren't one of these silly little creatures who give in. I'd live with him—if I loved him. I don't love Harry: that's why I wouldn't...." This, however, was bravado; and she passed on, ignoring the gross lapse into indelicate falsehood. "But he'd have to love me better than himself. That's it! I've got to be loved; not just wanted. I've got to be needed, and adored, and passionately wanted, and respected, and understood. Then I should be sure, and then I'd give back love for love—full measure. I'm too good for this ordinary love—this sort of 'affair' that Harry likes; or the marriage that's like taking a situation—'permanency.' I'm too good for it. I need half-a-dozen husbands to do me justice. I don't have to take what I can get. I'm ... I'm Patricia Quin!"
She was filled with supreme egotism.
iii
When little Jacky Dean called for her on the Saturday evening, Patricia was still full of her healing arrogance. She greeted Jacky rather sweepingly, because he was a young man who invited disdain; and in two minutes had received fresh reassurance as to her superiority to all other girls. Jacky was, in fact, the open-mouthed fair young man with whom she had found herself left at Topping's. He was always perfectly dressed, because he was wealthy and without occupation; and he was by way of being infatuated with Patricia. He was always at her service, always eager to stand a dinner or a dance, or a revue or musical play. Conversation beyond the "top-hole" stage he was incapable of reaching; but he was very dog-like, and looked sweetly pink and golden; and his dancing had improved; and he was never any strain, as he made no demands at all, but merely sought to be useful and obliging. He had two thousand pounds a year, with the prospect of more when an elderly aunt died; and he would proudly have married Patricia on the morrow. No wonder, therefore, that she was kind to him in a disdainful way, and refrained from hurting his feelings. Nothing would have made her marry him—the thought of doing so had never entered her mind; but she found his devotion rather pathetic at times, and always, in spite of the discipline Jacky received, most timidly fervent.
Jacky was subservient by nature. He had attached himself to the purlieus of the stage door as soon as he had become a man; he was a feature of river parties in the summer and every other sort of party for the remainder of the year. In physique he was a weed; but there was nothing noticeably the matter with him, beyond an amiable lack of brain. He was everybody's pet, as one who would never grow up and who never minded paying. Pleasure, in Jacky's case, was no feverishly-sought goal, but a state of being so customary as to limit his interests. His wan little face, with its air of constant innocence, was still that of a child. Whatever adventures he might have had in connection with the stage door had left him unscarred. He was still the delicious babe of his unripe years. Patricia found him easily manageable; he had never even dared to put his arm round her in a taxicab, although obviously he would have liked to venture this exploit. She had a considerable sense of power when she was in his company, and nothing had ever occurred to weaken it.