In the twitch of Molly’s sharp elbow there was a mental jog to my ribs. “Do--please--ask that question of the barkeep?” she modestly suggested to the strange gentleman. She had a trick of waiting, hanging on a man’s lips until he said something personal to her. Her long eyes languished, now, at the stranger. Triumph lit her face, and I saw that again she had misunderstood a man. She had a passion for translating all masculine glances into the caresses of love. Winnie whispered to me: “Notice a change in her?” “What’s it from?” I asked. “Ah that’s what we don’t know,” said Winnie. “She’s trying her best to make us believe that she is involved in some affair. And of course her telling it makes it sound as if it were not true, and we know her so well that we are sure she’d tell it if it were true.” “She looks wretchedly,” I said in the same low voice. “You’ll find we all do,” said Winnie briefly. I laughed. “Eva’s husband, I daresay you mean me to infer?” “Wait till you see,” she told me ominously. I asked her if Spencer Mapes were still Eva’s encroaching background. “Oh, encroaching!” she groaned. As he came up to us, I endeavoured to hold my greeting to a friendly indifference. He looked as if he were concealing some deep anxiety, and said at once: “I am thankful you’ve at last returned, Dinah. I always feel that you can be counted on to stand by Eva.” My recollections of Eva Litchfield, which before I had believed to be clear as daylight, had, through this confusion of innuendo, become a jumble of muggy half-tones. I thought: For God’s sake, Eva, why do you allow people to so use up your vital energy, blotting the flow of your inspiration as such interruptions must do some time if they haven’t done it already? From a long continued warm friendship, my attachment to her flared at this moment into idealization. I reproached myself that invariably I had been conscious of listening to her perplexities with avidity. I had said to her: “It comes down to this: one isn’t a novelist unless one has a consuming and all-embracing curiosity about people--all people--even those of whom one is fond--every human worm and every superhuman bore?” She had replied with her charming seriousness: “Of course.” And all the time I was conscious that she herself had no pure and cold-blooded curiosity about people whose problems did not touch her; when she listened to the recitals of those outside her life, she did it with warmth. Her good heart showed in her tolerance of the everlasting jabber of her friends--said I to myself, glancing forbiddingly at those whom Molly had invited to her little dinner in my honour. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I occasionally see when I am making a fool of myself. “Snap out of it, you hypocrite!” I began on myself. “You have every intention of hanging around Eva, of questioning, listening, and otherwise poking your nose--which Molly is right in dubbing a misfit--into things that are in no way your