Читать книгу The Three Lovers - Frank Swinnerton - Страница 23

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To herself, she thought: "She thinks she's immoral, when she's only conceited. How silly!" And with that she had her first glimpse of Amy's soul. The rapid judgment of others which children possess was still a faculty of Patricia's. Her self-knowledge was rather less. This that Amy indicated was to her an unknown world; but after all she had preserved her own liberty through a number of episodes common to the period in which she lived. The superficial excitements of dancing partners were not unknown to her, and she had the modern girl's knowledge of things which of old were hidden. Only a quick intelligence had saved her in the past, and she had been made exceptionally confident by experience in her power to deal with whatever situations might arise in her own life. Amy, who looked upon Patricia as a babe, continued to brood upon her trials.

"The men I like," she presently admitted, with candour, "don't seem to like me. The men who attract me. They go for the pretty, dolly woman."

"You're pretty," urged Patricia.

"They don't think so. What's left to me? People like Jack."

"But Amy.... It can't be so...." The word Patricia sought was "casual." "I mean, I thought one knew—that one either loved a man or didn't." She was pathetically bewildered.

"That's in days when a girl only knew the man she married, and one or two others. It's different now. You know a hundred men—who's to know which is the best of them?"

"Is that how the men feel?" asked Patricia.

Amy stirred in discomfort. She was ill at ease.

"My dear girl, you don't understand," she said. "There's physical attraction; and there's ... well, there's being pals with a man. But the old ideas of such things are gone."

Patricia shook her head. She was hearing of something she did not understand.

"I wish they weren't," was all she could find to say.

"They are!" fiercely cried Amy. "If I were a good girl, living at home, I should marry Jack and be told I'd made a 'suitable match.' But I'm not. I'm on my own. I'm going to have a life of my own. I'm going—I'm not going to be any man's property. That's finished."

A blank misery seized Patricia.

"I wish you were happy," she murmured. "Oh, I do wish you were." It was the only thing she could say, for she was not learned enough to arrive at any truer explanation than her own unutterable thought of a few minutes earlier.

Sombre dissatisfaction continued to cloud Amy's face.

"Yes," she said. "Of course, you don't understand. You couldn't. You've got one of those simple little natures. You're content. You don't know what suffering or temptation is. If a man says he loves you, you're ready to believe him. You're ready to fall in his arms."

"Am I?" inquired Patricia, dangerously. Her indignation was rising.

Amy looked suspiciously at her, too self-absorbed to give more than passing attention.

"You'll see. You're younger than I am. Perhaps you'll learn. Perhaps you'll find out for yourself what suffering is," she admonished, almost with a grim hopefulness.

There came again a sharp tapping at the studio door, and, as if bored almost to lethargy, Amy slowly moved to answer the call. Patricia, instantly alert to recall the injunction under which Jack Penton had departed, imagined hastily that he might have brought another visitor. And for Patricia at this time "another visitor" meant one only. She started at the second voice. Surely it was Harry's. Standing now, she faced the door, and could see beyond Amy to the figures of the two men who entered. First came Jack. There followed Monty Rosenberg.