And at once she found herself in the thick of it, talking in order to avoid being left out. She heard her voice complaining, reciting her grievances. She saw on their faces that they did not care; she realized--she must have--that those outside her line of vision laughed; but she went on, and on. She tried to stop talking: I saw that every now and then she seemed to keep her mouth shut by muscular control alone: and she knew that it had got beyond her mastery, and she feared that she was losing hold of everything in her being; and this still further alarmed her, so that she started running across the room: she must get away--away from herself. “What was that awful speculation of yours, Dinah--something about not daring to look within?” She reached the table behind which, entrenched, Addis Wickersham still philosophically contemplated his wife’s party. He gave her a forbidding look. “Have you eaten onions?” She shook her head. She leaned against the wall, her head thrown back. Her long throat blended like a pearl with the grey wall. She had come over here to cling to Addis Wickersham, to wring from him the intellectual reinstatement she must have in order to go on existing. He must be forced to say something definite about the one pure devotion of her life, her work. The noise of these many feminine voices, untuned by the bass of men’s voices, deafened her, took the fine edge off her wits; and she found that she was staring at Addis Wickersham, like a lost thing. She said to him, over and over--a child who has learned a set of words: “What do you think of my work, Addis? I want to know the truth of what you think. I’m strong enough to bear the truth.” And all the time, I felt sure that she was experiencing a new wonder about the truth. Wickersham’s nerves had frayed; and he was held to the scene by a horrible fascination. He was delighted to take it out on someone. “Has it never occurred to you, Eva, that you write not so much for the quality of literature as for the attention it wins for you?” This being unfair, and untrue, he looked ashamed of himself; but he let it stand. After all, Eva was trying.