I found time to be irritated that she had not said, frankly, upon our starting out for a walk, that she intended going to Mrs. Van Suydam’s. Why would she try to make me believe it the impulse of the moment? Nicholas quickened his pace, hurrying to join us. He must have looked forward to a stroll home with her; he must again have felt the need of those intimate touches of life with one’s wife when one is friends with her. And evening was even now dropping over the city, and with it the quiet. Doubtless he had welcomed the cessation of rivetting, the noise of which must of late have jabbered at him “All construction work is about over--your career is over--it may be that everything is over.” And here we came, with Eva between us; and her face was set in a tragic look of pain. He stopped short. “What has happened?” he demanded sharply. Without hesitation I played the coward. I turned and ran. But first I laid a firm hand on Spencer Mapes’ arm and held on until we were around the next corner. [Illustration] II Looking back on that dreadful winter, I seem to have run across Eva only upon occasions of disaster. I must have seen her in quieter moments, but the memory of pleasant things is overlaid with misery. I knew, when I started for the party given by Daniel Pentreath, that the evening would be a sign-post along the way. It was not cheering, upon my somewhat late arrival, to fall immediately into Florence Quincy’s hands; her laughter was derisive, was mournful, was a brew of all the sorts of laughter within the range of man. “You, too, searching for the unattainable?” “This is, then, one of your evenings in the grand manner,” I commented with resignation. “I asked you a simple question: what’s doing?” “And I answered you, perhaps less simply. For none of us know what’s doing.” Her painted mouth set in a smile which was the antithesis of her laughter: when she laughed, her face gave the impression of having broken in order to allow sound to escape. “Doubtless you will get off in a corner--and sit on your silly foot--and moon about your soul; and if you had a soul would you be here? There’s the answer. It’s the answer to everything about us, to every one of us and our questions about everything.” “And maybe I agree with you.” I saw the shiver which ran along her fine skin, so that the heavy powder she wore cracked, and rolled into ridges. “There’s something in the air tonight--something bad!” With her vermilion lip-stick, and her dead white thick powder, she was a tragic clown. Annoyed by the sound of a man’s groans coming from the adjacent bedroom, we moved away, although groans were not uncommon here.