I saw that he had marked that in her bearing which had shaken him. It was shocking for Eve, of all people, to show uncertainty of her powers; but he had seen, as I gleaned, that it was uncertainty which was now shaking the foundations on which her life had been built up. Without her pride and joy in her talent, Eva would be a broken woman. He told me that she had all at once cried, as if she had read his mind: “You can’t take it in that something dreadful is happening inside me? You can’t comprehend that an artist’s imagination is a delicate, brittle, easily injured quality?” He had been thrown, by this, back to his cool detachment; although it was not in a spirit of cool detachment that he reënacted this scene for my benefit. He was immensely stirred by the recollection of it. In his intelligence he understood only too well that this was the pose of the creative worker in all arts save architecture, but with his heart he realized that under her doubts Eva’s beauty had faded. It began to seem to him that the conceit of artists is a defence against their own fainting spirit, which otherwise might cringe before the world’s neglect. But she had at once put it on him; she had explained that she felt as if she were beating her head against something more unyielding than the proverbial stone wall when she tried to argue with him. She said it was the fixity of his smile. “You don’t know how you stare at me!” she had said in what amounted to a shriek. “This was where I was cruel to her, Dinah--and I know it now. I suppose I knew it then, and wanted to be cruel. You see, I don’t trust the influence of that fellow Mapes. You can never put your finger on Eva’s motives; they’re damned complex for a simple man to follow.” “She is complex,” I put in. I wondered if he were going to regret having told me this. But he had to tell someone: even men feel the necessity to talk, I reflected derisively. “Her acts are necessarily hard to understand, although I don’t doubt that they are simple, and above board, if you could get at them.” “Then what does she think--feel--about this Mapes fellow?” he asked urgently, but looking ashamed of himself. I explained that she respected his judgment of her work.