'Don't talk; I want to think,' and she, after a little gasp of astonished indignation, had relapsed languorous into her corner, her head propped on her hand, and her profile alone visible to her cousin. He saw, in the brief glance that he vouchsafed her, that her red mouth looked more than usually sulky, in fact not unlike the mouth of a child on the point of tears, a very invitation to inquiry, but, more from indifference than deliberate wisdom, he was not disposed to take up the challenge. He too sat silent, his thoughts flying over the day, weighing the consequences of his own action, trying to forecast the future. He was far away from Eve, and she knew it. At times he enraged and exasperated her almost beyond control. His indifference was an outrage on her femininity. She knew him to be utterly beyond her influence: taciturn when he chose, ill-tempered when he chose, exuberant when he chose, rampageous, wild; insulting to her at moments; domineering whatever his mood, and regardless of her wishes; yet at the same time unconscious of all these things. Alone with her now, he had completely forgotten her presence by his side. Her voice broke upon his reflections,-- 'Thinking of the Islands, Julian?' and her words joining like a cogwheel smoothly on to the current of his mind, he answered naturally,-- 'Yes,' 'I thought as much. I have something to tell you. You may not be interested. I am no longer engaged to Miloradovitch.' 'Since when?' 'Since yesterday evening. Since you left me, and ran away into the woods. I was angry, and vented my anger on him.' 'Was that fair?' 'He has you to thank. It has happened before--with others.' Roused for a second from his absorption, he impatiently shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back, and looked out over the sea. Eve was again silent, brooding and resentful in her corner. Presently he turned towards her, and said angrily, reverting to the Islands,-- 'You are the vainest and most exorbitant woman I know. You resent one's interest in anything but yourself.' As she did not answer, he added,-- 'How sulky you look; it's very unbecoming.' Was no sense of proportion or of responsibility ever to weigh upon her beautiful shoulders? He was irritated, yet he knew that his irritation was half-assumed, and that in his heart he was no more annoyed by her fantasy than by the fantasy of Herakleion. They matched each other; their intangibility, their instability, were enough to make a man shake his fists to Heaven, yet he was beginning to believe that their colour and romance--for he never dissociated Eve and Herakleion in his mind--were the dearest treasures of his youth. He turned violently and amazingly upon her. 'Eve, I sometimes hate you, damn you; but you are the rainbow of my days.'