It was about this time that Eve began to realise the limitations of her present life, and to look towards a very problematical future. It seemed more than probable that “means to the end” would absorb all her energies, and that the end itself would never arrive. She found that her hack work was growing more and more supreme, and that she had no leisure for her own art. She felt tired at night, and on Saturdays she was more tempted to go to a theatre than to sit at home in Bosnia Road and try to produce pictures. Sundays, too, became sterile. She stayed in bed till ten, and when she had had breakfast she found the suburban atmosphere weighing upon her spirits. Church bells rang; decorous people in Sunday clothes passed her window on their way to church or chapel. If she went for a walk she everywhere met a suggestion of respectable relaxation that dominated her energies and sent her home depressed and cynical. As for the afternoons, they were spoilt for her by Mr. Albert Buss’s banjo, though how his genteel mother reconciled herself to banjo-playing on a Sunday Eve could not imagine. Three or four friends joined him. Eve saw them saunter in at the gate, with dandy canes, soft hats, and an air of raw doggishness. They usually stared hard at her window. The walls and floors were thin, and Eve could hear much that they said, especially when Mrs. Buss went out for her afternoon walk, and left the “nuts” together. They talked about horse-racing and girls. “She’s a little bit of all right!” “You bet!” “Ain’t afraid to go home in the dark!” “What sort of young lady’s the lodger, Bert? Anything on?” “Not my style. Ain’t taking any!” “Go on, you don’t know how to play up to a girl. I’d get round anything in London.” Just about dusk Mr. Buss and his friends sauntered out on love adventures, and Mrs. Buss sat down at her piano and sung hymns with a sort of rolling, throaty gusto. Eve found it almost unendurable, so much so that she abandoned the idea of trying to use her Sundays at Bosnia Road, and asked Kate Duveen to let her spend the day with her in Bloomsbury. On weekdays, when it happened to be fine and not too cold, she and Kate would spend the twenty minutes after lunch in St. James’s Park, sitting on a seat and watching the irrepressible sparrows or the machinations of a predatory cat. The bare trees stood out against the misty blue of the London horizon, and even when the sun shone, the sunlight seemed very thin and feeble. Other people sat on the seats, and read, or ate food out of paper bags. Very rarely were these people conversational. They appeared to have many thoughts to brood over, and nothing to say. Kate Duveen had noticed a change in Eve. There was a different look in her eyes. She, too, was less talkative, and sometimes a cynical note came into her voice. “What are you thinking about?” “Was I thinking?” “You haven’t said anything for five minutes.”