I interrupted to say that she was trying to sublimate herself; and as I spoke I wondered if she had come into the world sublimated. She paid no attention to my comment, but went on to tell me that she had finally gone back to his room and explained all of this to him. That is, she amended with her little gurgling laugh that was so much lower in pitch than her voice, she had tried to make him see, but--naturally--he had been unable to look at it in her way. “I do believe the silly man is jealous of Spencer Mapes!” “Why do you think that? How--” I enquired witheringly--“how could anyone be jealous of Spence?” “I know he is,” she told me, “because he is forever saying he isn’t. But that isn’t of the slightest importance; why did you take me up on it? I was going to tell you about the prophets crying in the wilderness ‘Repent ye!’ Nick’s crowd make the summer and the winter noisy with their clamour.” “You don’t think, then, that our crowd cry in the wilderness?” I was unable to resist this dig at Eva, who, with her horror of realism, had the most amazingly fatuous outlook on her immediate surroundings. She vigorously denied the possibility. “Ah you are hopeless!” I sighed. “But you were born a pessimist,” she pointed out. I dropped it. “You were going to tell me of some interference on the part of--which of your husband’s friends was it?” I asked with resignation. She laughed. Hers was never the coarsened laughter of those of us who had a wider view of the meanness of life. Her merriment tinkled, without a touch of childishness. It was the detached amusement of the fairies. “Not interference, darling: comments. Comments on whatever Nick and I decide to do. In this case, my last summer’s trip to Europe. They share Nick’s obsession of the decency of a husband and wife being continually seen in each other’s company. I went in to see my mother-in-law, whom I adore; and I overheard this attack on me.” “You mean, you listened?” “I mean just that. Did you never listen when you shouldn’t?” To everything that had been told me about Eva I had listened; and this, while not eavesdropping, was prying. I contented myself with “What did you hear?” “They were drinking tea. It’s a rite in the good old manner, at my mother-in-law’s. The Ingoldsby sisters and Mr. Tappan Tillinghast--isn’t that a delicious name, Dinah, if one uses the sonorous whole of it?--sat politely, watching my mother-in-law handle the fat silver teapot. She has the grand manner when she pours tea; and she’s intelligent enough to know it and to therefore cling to the custom--although I believe she would scorn to play to the gallery of even her intimate friends. It was delightful, and I stood around the door jamb and admired it.” This was the only excuse she offered for her nefarious act.