So every afternoon Eve cooked a meal over a grubby little gas-ring, assisted by a methylated spirit stove, and had the satisfaction of seeing her labours rewarded by a slightly added tinge of colour to his cheeks. In buying the food she contributed more toward the cost than he, for in the matter of money he was strangely unmindful. Frequently he forgot his weekly contribution altogether, and returned home with some trifle of china or an old print by way of alternative. On these occasions it did not occur to him to question how meals still appeared upon his table, and Eve would not have told him for the world how hard it had been that this should be so. Increasingly her thoughts centred on his welfare, and her own personality took second place. Even her ambitions—and they had been many and glorious—became merged in the task of helping him to success. He had not taken into consideration the possibility that she, too, was a climber at heart, and had set her sails for the port where the dreams come true. He was quite offended when one day she spoke of herself. “But can you act?” he staccatoed. “One day I shall,” she answered. “One day I shall feel I know so much more than all the others—then I shall act, and people will sit up and say so.” “H’m.” “You think it unlikely?” “Oh, I don’t know.” He fidgeted with a cup on the mantelshelf. “It seemed you were echoing those things which I say to myself.” “We have thoughts in common.” He shook his head irritably. “I don’t admit it. There is no common currency in thoughts or ideas. To me parallel lines are antagonistic lines. Why should you want to act?” “I want to express myself as strongly as you do. I want to succeed.” “I don’t like women who succeed. Why should you succeed? Where’s the necessity—?” “Born in me,” she answered. His words for the moment had hurt her bitterly, but the subtler side of her nature took comfort from the almost childishly petulant tone in which he had spoken them. “The necessity is born by the things around you,” he said. “They are the impulses toward success.” “Yes, that’s true. Perhaps it was the wretched drabness of my surroundings which fired the impulse in me. We haven’t talked to each other of our people, you and I?” “I never think back,” he said. “I do, because it’s the impetus to think forward.” He looked at her critically. “You might have come from princely stock by the look of you. You haven’t the seeming of the drab.”