She cried softly in the dark because she could not say her prayers. The tumult in her heart was too loud. CHAPTER XII PATRICIA MOVES She received Rosamond's careless chiding for her unconventional behavior with an uneasy feeling. Her divinity was showing the first flaw. "I don't think I was entirely to blame, even though I did feel shy at first," she defended herself with some hesitation. "Couldn't you have sent for me, even if you didn't want to come yourself? The footmen were going about constantly with those cute little ices." Her sense of justice was not appeased by her friend's evading this very reasonable statement, and Rosamond's laughing indifference to her disappointment in not meeting Madame Milano again stung her to the quick. She was too proud to show her feelings openly, however, and she went to her lesson very miserable indeed, feeling that she had lost both the splendid Rosamond's interest and her dear Elinor's sympathy. That was one of the worst mornings Patricia ever knew. She sang so unevenly that Tancredi scolded her and put her back in her first exercises for punishment. She was longing to ask about Madame Milano, but her lips were sealed by her own fault. She would not trespass on her teacher's indulgence and she left the house so wretched that she hated even the dear music she had so longed for and lived in. "I'll never be a real singer," she thought dolefully, as she walked slowly towards Artemis Lodge. "Tancredi doesn't care a rap about my voice and I don't believe she'd have bothered with me if it hadn't been to please Madame Milano, and Madame Milano only told me to go on because she wanted to please Elinor and Bruce because they are friends of the Van Kelts, who are such chums with her Dutch friend." If she had not been so woebegone she would have laughed at this string of disheartening reasons for her being so falsely encouraged to compete with gifted creatures like Rosamond Merton, but her gloom was too deep and too real to see the funny side of anything just then. The clock in the tower was pointing to twelve as she passed along on the other side of the Square, and she looked wistfully up at the big window of the studio, where she knew that Elinor or Bruce would be just dismissing a model and making ready to clean their brushes and tidy up for the one o'clock luncheon which they always had sent in to them. "I wonder if they'd care if they never saw me again," she thought with what she instantly knew to be shallow sentimentality. "I suppose they would care," she acknowledged, and her sense of justice saved her from any more silly speeches like that. "They think I'm an awful goose, though," she amended, and she knew she was rather safe in this.