Eve read Canterton’s letter at her desk at Miss Champion’s. It was a longish letter, and as she read it she seemed to hear him talking in the fir woods below Orchards Corner. “DEAR EVE,—I write to you as a man who has been humbled, and who has had to bear the bitterness of not being able to make amends. “I came to see things with your eyes, quite suddenly, the very morning that you went away. I took Lynette with me to Orchards Corner, to show her as a symbol of my surrender. But you had gone. “I was humbled. And the silence that shut me in humbled me still more. “I did not try to discover things, though that might have been easy. “As to your leaving Fernhill so suddenly, I managed to smother all comment upon that. “You had been offered, unexpectedly, a very good post in London, and your mother’s death had made you feel restless at Orchards Corner. That was what I said. “Lynette talks of you very often. It is, ‘When will Miss Eve come down to see us?’ ‘Won’t she spend her holidays here?’ ‘Won’t you take me to London, daddy, to see Miss Eve?’ “As for this money that you have returned to me, I have put it aside and added a sum to it for a certain purpose that has taken my fancy. I let you return it to me, because I have some understanding of your pride. “I am glad, deeply glad, that good luck has come to you. If I can serve you at any time and in any way, you can count on me to the last breath. “I am a different man, in some respects, from the man I was three months ago. Try to realise that. Try to realise what it suggests. “If you realise it, will you let me see you now and again, just as a comrade and a friend? “Say yes or no. “JAMES CANTERTON.” Eve was bemused all day, her eyes looking through her work into infinite distances. She avoided Kate Duveen, whose unsentimental directness would have hurt her, lunched by herself, and walked home alone to Bosnia Road. She sat staring at the fire most of the evening before she wrote to Canterton. “Your letter has made me both sad and happy, Jim. Don’t feel humbled on my account. The humiliation should be mine, because neither the world nor I could match your magnanimity. “Sometimes my heart is very hungry for sight of Lynette. “Yes, I am working hard. It is better that I should say ‘No.’ “EVE.” Four days passed before Kate handed her another letter. “Perhaps you are right, and I am wrong. If it is your wish that I should not see you, I bow to it with all reverence. “Do not think that I do not understand.