“She put it down to a real reversal of values. She thinks that maybe she will get her bearings; and maybe not. She said she had found out that one can’t force issues.” I judged that he had been rendered uneasy by this. He had dimly perceived a change in her, so that her words had been merely a confirmation. At times, during the last few days, she had looked as if the breaking point with which he had frequently threatened her were close at hand. This morning she had asked him to meet her here; and he had demurred, because he thought it unsuitable for him to intrude on her business relations. She had, he assured me, all but begged him to come. “She said--it’s so foolish to repeat it!--but she did say that she had about found that her need for me was not so much---- I do feel that I’m drivelling!” “Go on,” I encouraged him. “I’m tremendously interested. And do remember that I’ve known Eva longer than have you.” Thus urged, he fixed his eyes on a distant object--it happened to be the frowsy female who still expounded the salient points of her book--and, virtually, plunged. “You know, then, how carefully she chooses her words--it’s almost as if she had got them on paper, she’s so sure--so that what she says has an added weight of truth? She said ‘I found out, lately, that my need for you is not so much physical as it’s spiritual.’” He laughed a little, and asked if I considered this a complimentary remark for a wife to make to a husband. “From Eva? Undoubtedly.” I left him in no doubt that I was positive about it. “I didn’t think of it in that way,” he then acknowledged. “I could think of nothing besides what I put to her--a hot demand to know what the devil she meant. I do feel apologetic for telling you this,” he broke off to say. “I must be catching your literary urge to tell all.” I overlooked the slur to again beg him to proceed. “I’ve been away so long,” I told him, “that I myself know little to tell, and possibly--undoubtedly--should tell it if I had any store of knowledge. But, seriously, I am fond of Eva; and I want to hear everything that you’re willing to tell me.” He gave me a quick look. I detected an added stiffness in his manner when, after thinking it over, he complied. “What she said next is really my reason for bringing up the subject. I’m aware that you’re a friend of hers, and I feel on my own part that you can be trusted.” This I could take only as a rebuke, although he was unaware of its hitting me hard: he had no way of knowing that I had been up to what I could only call ferreting. However, my qualm of conscience did not prevent my listening eagerly to what he had to say.