England and Oxford were put aside; not forgotten, not indistinct, not faded like Herakleion was wont to fade, but merely put aside, laid away like winter garments in summer weather. He was once more in the kingdom of stucco and adventure. Eve was coming back to him, with her strange shadowy eyes and red mouth, and her frivolity beneath which lay some force which was not frivolous. There were women who were primarily pretty; women who were primarily motherly; women who, like Mrs Robert Davenant, were primarily efficient, commanding, successful, metallic; women who, like Kato, were consumed by a flame of purpose which broke, hot and scorching, from their speech and burned relentlessly in their eyes; women who were primarily vain and trifling; he found he could crowd Eve into no such category. He recalled her, spoilt, exquisite, witty, mettlesome, elusive, tantalising; detached from such practical considerations as punctuality, convenience, reliability. A creature that, from the age of three, had exacted homage and protection.... He heard her indolent voice behind him in the room, and turned expectantly for their meeting. III It was, however, during his first visit to the singer's flat that he felt himself again completely a citizen of Herakleion; that he felt himself, in fact, closer than ever before to the beating heart of intrigue and aspiration. Kato received him alone, and her immediate comradely grasp of his hand dispelled the shyness which had been induced in him by the concert; her vigorous simplicity caused him to forget the applause and enthusiasm he had that afternoon seen lavished on her as a public figure; he found in her an almost masculine friendliness and keenness of intellect, which loosened his tongue, sharpened his wits, set him on the path of discovery and self-expression. Kato watched him with her little bright eyes, nodding her approval with quick grunts; he paced her room, talking. 'Does one come, ever, to a clear conception of one's ultimate ambitions? Not one's personal ambitions, of course; they don't count.' ('How young he is,' she thought.) 'But to conceive clearly, I mean, exactly what one sets out to create, and what to destroy. If not, one must surely spend the whole of life working in the dark? Laying in little bits of mosaic, without once stepping back to examine the whole scheme of the picture.... One instinctively opposes authority. One struggles for freedom. Why? Why? What's at the bottom of that instinct? Why are we, men, born the instinctive enemies of order and civilisation, when order and civilisation are the weapons and the shields we, men, have ourselves instituted for our own protection? It's illogical.