Kate Duveen stood up. “You scored a hit there. Yes, I’ll promise that. Of course, Eve will never know you have been here.” “I rely on you there. Men are apt to forget that women have pride.” She held out a hand to him. “There’s my pledge. I can assure you that I had some bitter things under my tongue when you came in. I have not said them.” “They could not have hurt more than some of my own thoughts have hurt me. That’s the mistake people make. The whip does not wound so much as compassion.” “Yes, that’s true. A blow puts our egotism in a temper. I’ll remember that!” “I am glad that you are Eve’s friend.” Kate Duveen stood looking down into the fire after Canterton had gone. “One must not indulge in absolute generalities,” she thought. “Men can be big—sometimes. Now for this stodgy old German.” * * * * * CHAPTER XXIV EVE’S SENSE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF LIFE Eve’s London moods began to be more complex, and tinged with discontent. The homelessness of the great city depressed her. She felt its chaotic vastness, knowing all the while that there was ordered purpose behind all its seeming chaos, and that all its clamour and hurry and crowded interplay of energies had meaning and significance. There were some few men who ruled, and who perhaps understood, but the crowd! She knew herself to be one of the crowd driven forward by necessity that barked like a brisk sheepdog round and about a drove of sheep. Sometimes her mood was one of passionate resentment. London was so abominably ugly, and the eternal and seemingly senseless hurry tired her brain and her eyes. She had no cockney instincts, and the characteristic smells of the great city aroused no feeling of affectionate satisfaction. The odours connected with burnt oil and petrol, pickle and jam factories, the laying of asphalt, breweries, Covent Garden, the Meat Market, had no familiar suggestiveness. Nor did the shops interest her for the moment. She had left the more feminine part of herself at Fernhill, and was content to wear black.