“Certainly, miss. I’ll send Albert down to the pillar-box. Excuse me saying it; but you do look pounds better. You’ve got quite a colour.” And she went out, simpering. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXII EVE DETERMINES TO LEAVE BOSNIA ROAD After she had written to John Parfit, Eve kept the promise she had made to Kate Duveen, but qualified her confession by an optimism that took the sting out of the truths that she had to tell. She made light of the Massinger affair, even though she had some bitter things to say about Miss Champion. “One learns to expect certain savageries from the ordinary sort of man, but it shocks one when a woman makes you bear all the responsibility, so that she may not offend a patron. That was the really sordid part of the experience.” She hinted vaguely that someone wanted to marry her, but that she had no intention of marrying. She made light of her illness, and wrote of her financial experiences with cynical gaiety. “My landlady’s face is a barometer that registers the state of my weather. Of late, the mercury has been low. Another woman whom I can manage to pity! Do not think that I am in a parlous and desperate state. I want to go through these experiences. They give one a sense of proportion, and teach one the value of occasional recklessness. We are not half reckless enough, we moderns. We are educated to be too careful. In future, I may contemplate adventures.” It is probable that John Parfit’s proposal and its psychological effects on her rallied her pride, for she threw off the lethargy of convalescence, and turned anew to meet necessity. John Parfit had answered her letter by return, and he had succeeded in fully living up to his ideal of what was “sport.” “Playing the game,”—that is the phrase that embodies the religion of many such a man as John Parfit. “Nothing could have made me admire you more than the straight way you have written. Nothing like the truth. It may be bitter, but it’s good physic. Well, I shall be here. Think it over. It’s the afterwards in marriage that counts, not the courting, and I’d do my best to make the afterwards what it should be. “You’ll let me see you sometimes, won’t you? I shan’t bother you. I’m not a conceited ass, and I’ll wait and take my chance.”