She gave him a swift, estimating glance before she went on: "I'm very fond of Pat, Mr. Scott. Most of my money will go to her eventually, unless I marry."
"Which is inevitable," he put in.
"Which is the most improbable thing in the world. And I want to see her happy. She has great possibilities of happiness, and great possibilities of tragedy. It is a tragic face, rather; have you noticed that?"
"It is a face impossible to analyse."
"True enough. It has the mysterious quality that quite outdoes beauty. Men go mad over that type of face, though one doesn't find it in poetry or painting. I wonder why? Is it because genius doesn't dare that far, because it is untransferable even for genius? Perhaps it is genius in itself. Didn't some poet say that beauty of a kind is genius?... What are you going to do with Pat, Mr. Scott?"
"Nothing. What is there to do?"
"Laissez faire? There's danger in letting things take their course too. There is danger everywhere in this sort of affair. Let me interpret a little of Pat's mind for you. She is a combination of instinctive shrewdness, ignorance, false standards and beliefs, and straight thinking. There's an innocence about her that is appalling, an innocence as regards life as it really is. One might say that her ideas of the more intimate phases of life are formed mainly from the trashy, sexy-sentimental plays and the more trashy motion pictures that she loves. She believes that sin is always punished in the direct and logical way. If she should surrender to a man she would expect first, to have a baby at once; second, that the man would naturally despise and abandon her; that's what the modern drama teaches, on the ground, one supposes, that it's an influence for safety. And perhaps," continued the analyst thoughtfully, "it is. Though I'm rather for the truth myself. But there are other things taught in the same school that aren't so safe. Did you happen to read a fool book called The Salamander some years ago?"
"Yes; but I didn't think it so bad."
"Because you're a man and don't understand what the effect of it has been. A Salamander school of fiction and drama has grown out of it. The central idea is that if a girl is 'pure' she can get herself into any kind of situation, take any kind of chance with any kind of man, play the game of passion to the limit and yet come out unscathed; virtue its own safeguard, and that sort of thing. Why I saw a play this winter which was written to prove that a girl of to-day could spend a night alone in a house with a man with whom she was in love without any thought of harm. Yet the censors suppress honest portrayals of life as it really is. It's a great little world, Cary Scott, if your mind doesn't weaken. But I think mine has!"
Pat, passing by on the arm of a worshipping partner, stopped to give them a smile.