He watched her in silence as she poured out the tea, and the thought crossed his mind that it was incredibly long since he had seen a woman preside over a meal. The deftness of her fingers filled him with an unfamiliar, half-inquisitive wonder. So interesting was the sensation that, when she held his cup towards him, he didn't immediately see it. “Don't you want any?” She smiled a little. He started, embarrassed by his own tardiness. “I'm afraid I'm dull,” he said. “I've been so--” “So keen a worker in the last week?” For a moment he felt relieved. Then, as a fresh silence fell, his sense of awkwardness returned. He sipped his tea and ate a biscuit. He found himself wishing, for almost the first time, for some of the small society talk that came so pleasantly to other men. He felt that the position was ridiculous. He glanced at Eve's averted head, and laid his empty cup upon the table. Almost at once she turned, and their eyes met. “John,” she said, “do you guess at all why I wanted to have tea with you?” He looked down at her. “No,” he said, honestly and without embellishment. The curtness of the answer might have displeased another woman. Eve seemed to take no offence. “I had a talk with the Fraides to-day,” she said “A long talk. Mr. Fraide said great things of you--things I wouldn't have believed from anybody but Mr. Fraide.” She altered her position and looked from Loder's face back into the fire. He took a step forward. “What things?” he said. He was almost ashamed of the sudden, inordinate satisfaction that welled up at her words. “Oh, I mustn't tell you!” She laughed a little. “But you have surprised him.” She paused, sipped her tea, then looked up again with a change of expression. “John,” she said, more seriously, “there is one point that sticks a little. Will this great change last?” Her voice was direct and even--wonderfully direct for a woman, Loder thought. It came to him with a certain force that beneath her remarkable charm might possibly lie a remarkable character. It was not a possibility that had occurred to him before, and it caused him to look at her a second time. In the new light he saw her beauty differently, and it interested him differently. Heretofore he had been inclined to class women under three heads--idols, amusements, or encumbrances; now it crossed his mind that a woman might possibly fill another place--the place of a companion. “You are very sceptical,” he said, still looking down at her. She did not return his glance. “I think I have been made sceptical,” she said. As she spoke the image of Chilcote shot through his mind. Chilcote, irritable, vicious, unstable, and a quick compassion for this woman so inevitably shackled to him followed it. Eve, unconscious of what was passing in his mind, went on with her subject.