The abuse of the telephone for domestic purposes killed all agreeable intimacy among friends. People no longer saw one another; they no longer had any need to dress and send for the carriage, the "chariot"; for they chatted over the telephone, in sarong and kabaai, in pyjamas, almost without stirring a limb. The telephone was close at hand and the bell was constantly ringing in the back-verandah. People rang one another up for nothing, for the mere fun of ringing up. Young Mrs. De Harteman had an intimate friend, a young woman whom she never saw and to whom she telephoned daily, for half an hour at a time. She sat down to it, so it did not tire her. And she laughed and joked with her friend, without having to dress and without moving. She did the same with other friends: she paid her visits by telephone. She did her shopping by telephone. Eva had not been accustomed at Labuwangi to this everlasting tinkling and ringing up, which killed all conversation and, in the back-verandah, revealed one half of a dialogue--the replies being inaudible to any one sitting away from the instrument--in the form of an incessant, one-sided jabbering. It got on her nerves and drove her to her room. And, amid the boredom of this life, full of care and inward brooding for the husband and penetrated by the chatter of the wife's telephonic conversations, Eva would be surprised suddenly to hear of a special excitement: a fancy-fair and the rehearsals of an amateur operatic performance. She herself attended one of these rehearsals during her visit and was astonished by the really first-rate execution, as though those musical amateurs had put the strength of despair into it, to dispel the tedium of the Batavian evenings. For the Italian opera had left; and she had to laugh at the heading "Amusements" in the Javabode, which amusements as a rule were limited to a choice of three or four meetings of shareholders. This too used to be different, said old Mrs. De Harteman, who remembered the excellent French opera of twenty-five years ago, which, it was true, cost thousands, but for which the thousands were always forthcoming. No, people no longer had the money to amuse themselves at night. They sometimes gave a very expensive dinner, or else went to a meeting of shareholders. Eva, in truth, considered Labuwangi a much livelier place. True, she herself had largely contributed to the liveliness, at the instigation of Van Oudijck, who was glad to make the capital of his district a pleasant, cheerful little town. And she came to the conclusion that, after all, she preferred a small, up-country place, with a few cultured, agreeable European inhabitants--provided that they harmonized with one another and did not quarrel overmuch in the intimacy of their common life--to this pretentious, pompous, dreary Batavia. The only life was among the military element. Only the officers' houses were lit up in the evening. Apart from this, the town lay as though moribund,