Florence said indifferently: “I am cooling down; but by way of justification of my attitude I’ll say that I object to the implied but ever-present self-praise of the hedonist. Why should Eva take the position that, because she is Eva Litchfield, she is privileged to ruin a party? Naturally, I don’t acknowledge your right to ask. What a crowd we are, to be sure!” She lifted her shoulders. “You weren’t there when Molly read her poem; so you missed Eva’s dramatic ‘That I--I!--should have to listen to such words! Such ill-chosen words! It kills me! It kills me!’ If she for her part is going back on her friends----” Glidden murmured: “Will you stand by ‘hedonist’?” I was so weary that the chair seemed not to touch my body. In the light of half the things she did, Eva appeared to be an unreasoning wretch. Influenced by her husband on the one side and by her friends on the other side, she occasionally--they thought--kicked over the traces and followed a line of her own choosing. But I doubted if her outbursts had their origin in suppressed desires: she seldom suppressed anything. Her actions were variable, seeming to spring from nothing more profound, more remote from the trivialities of daily life, than the casual speeches of her acquaintances. Most people are influenced by their friends; but I have seen no one so instantly changed, and so apt to be as instantly changed in the other direction, as Eva Litchfield. A flower has little root. That her husband was genuinely puzzled by her I had not for some time doubted. Arriving at the tea for Molly, I had run into Eva and Nicholas disputing outside the entrance. He detained her while he stated his case. “Look here, you are a changed woman the instant you’re thrown with your friends. I never saw anything so peculiar. It’s a fit that comes over you. The fit--” he concluded bitterly--“is on you now.”