Patricia nodded. She must accustom herself to all this sort of thing. She had only to be firm when they met—firm and friendly (ah! how easy to contemplate; how hard to execute!), and all would settle itself. It was not like.... Oh, how silly life was! thought Patricia. Her eyelids fluttered. How alone she felt! Sometimes it seemed to her that with all these friends she had no friend. What was the cause? Was it in herself? Impossible! She said that last word aloud.
"Pardon?" asked Jacky, only half hearing Patricia's exclamation.
Patricia laughed at his surprised face.
"Only talking to myself," she assured him. "What's the time?"
"Have a Kümmel," urged Jacky. "Cures anything." His own face was irradiated with a cheerful and meaningless smile. Patricia's heart sank. He was one of her friends. She was torn between shame for him, shame of herself for thinking shame of him, and a sense of superiority to her contemporaries.
v
They reached Monty's by half-past nine; and Patricia was struck by the difference between her sensations now and upon her first visit. Then, it had been fairyland. But she saw the studio with changed eyes. It was not so large or so beautiful; the people were not so handsome or remarkable. She looked round upon them with interest, but it was not as an astonishing body. It was with curiosity as to the composition of the gathering. Fully half of them were now known to her as acquaintances. The noise they made was familiar; she had no longer the feeling of fresh enthusiasm. She was restless and dissatisfied.
Only Monty still attracted her. She thought him easily more distinguished than any of his guests. Where they all appeared to say the same thing over and over again, he, by his silence, his inscrutable air of seeing everything and knowing everything, soothed and charmed her. When Monty danced with her she was happy. He was unlike the rest. Patricia could dance a whole evening with Jacky, and be unaware that there was any current between them of more than common enjoyment of moderate proficiency in dancing. But she could not dance once with Monty without feeling his magnetism. There was something amazing in his dexterity, in his immovable calm. To be with him was to be as one hypnotised. Monty's low, soft tones, with that singular rise at the end of each sentence; his certainty of resource; his extreme delicacy of movement and his fastidious politeness—these were the instruments of his hypnotic power. But the feeling she had that he was so wise in the affairs of life, so bored by them, so expert in handling them, went with a corresponding feeling that he was greatly attracted to herself. Monty's almost exaggerated respect, and the incessant flattery of his conciliatory manner, all moved Patricia to happiness. And her happiness was the whole time salted by the feeling that she did not trust him, that she must never be off her guard with him. It made Monty the more flattering, the more attractive. He moved her. He made her forget Harry.
There was something in Monty's manner which caused Patricia to feel that he knew all about Harry and herself—all about everything Harry had ever done; and that she would never know how much he knew of herself. She felt that nothing would ever surprise him, or move him; and yet at the same time she knew that he was a refined voluptuary, and that the soothing calm of Monty affected her own senses as even Harry's beauty and vitality and eager affection for herself had not done. She danced three or four times with Monty; and each time she danced with him it was as though she received from his touch a subtle current that made her, if not wiser, at least more experienced in the art of living dangerously and with relish.
To Jacky, afterwards, she said: