One morning it snowed hard before breakfast for about an hour, and by one o’clock London was a city of slush. Eve felt depressed, and her shoes and stockings and the bottom of her skirt were sodden when she reached the flat in Purbeck Street. Adolf smiled his usual smile, and confessed that Mr. Massinger had not expected her. “Ma Donna! I never thought you would brave this horrible weather.” He threw a book aside and was up, solicitous, and not a little pleased at the chance of being tender. “I suppose English weather is part of the irony of life!” “Good heavens! Your shoes and skirt are wet!” “A little.” He piled two or three cushions in front of the fire. “Do sit down and take your shoes and stockings off, and dry your skirt.” She sat down and took off her shoes. “Stockings too! I can be very fatherly and severe. Do you think it immodest to show your bare feet? You must have a liqueur; it will warm you.” “I would rather not.” “Oh, come! You are a pale Iseult to-day.” “Thank you, I would rather not.” “Then Adolf shall make us coffee.” He rang the bell. “Adolf, coffee and some biscuits! And bring that purple scarf of mine.” The scarf arrived first, and Massinger held it spread over his hands like a shop-assistant showing off a length of silk. “Two little white empresses shall wear the purple. No work this afternoon. I am going to try to make you forget the weather.” Adolf came in noiselessly with the coffee, set it on a stool beside Eve, and departed just as noiselessly, and with an absolutely expressionless face. The way he had of effacing himself made Eve more conscious of his existence. The fire was comforting, so was the coffee. She could have slipped into a mood of soothed indolence if Massinger had not been present. But his leering obsequiousness had disturbed her, and she found herself facing that eternal problem as to how a woman should behave to a man who employed her and paid for her time. Was it necessary to quarrel with all this sentimental by-play? She still held to her impression that he was a very great ass. “This detestable climate! It brutalises us. It makes one understand why the English drink beer, and love to see the red corpses of animals hung up in shops. A gross climate, and a gross people.” Eve had wrapped the purple scarf round her feet. “If we could be sure of a little sunshine every other day!” She was staring at the fire, and Massinger was studying her with an interested intentness. Thought and desire were mingled at the back of his pale eyes. “Sunshine—clear, yellow light! Don’t you yearn for it?” “Who does not? With the exception of the people who have been baked in the tropics.” “And it is so near. The people who are free can always find it.” He lay back against the cushions on the lounge, his eyes still on her, and shining with an incipient smile.