Lynette’s eyes began to brighten to the big playful child in him. “Lord Admiral, I think you must look so nice in a cocked hat. I’ve left Miss Eve, you see. She’s been away, and she’s my great friend.” “I won’t stand in Miss Eve’s way.” “But she’s not a bit selfish, and I think I might spare half an hour.” “Miss Canterton, let me assure you that I most deeply appreciate this compliment.” Eve, left alone, wandered here and there, knowing hardly a soul, and feeling rather lost and superfluous. Happiness in such shows consists in being comfortably inconspicuous, a talker among talkers, though there are some who can hold aloof with an air of casual detachment, and outstare the crowd from some pillar of isolation. Eve had a self-conscious fit upon her. Gertrude Canterton’s parties were huge and crowded failures. The subtle atmosphere that pervades such social assemblies was restless, critical, uneasy, at Fernhill. People talked more foolishly than usual, and were either more absurdly stiff or more absurdly genial than was their wont. The string band had begun to play one of Brahms’ Hungarian melodies. It was a superb band, and the music had an impetuous and barbaric sensuousness, a Bacchic rush of half-naked bodies whirling together through a shower of vine leaves and flowers. The talk on the lawn seemed so much gabble, and Eve wandered out, and round behind the great sequoia where she could listen to the music and be at peace. She wondered what the violinists thought of the crowd over yonder, these men who could make the strings utter wild, desirous cries. What a stiff, preposterous, and complacent crowd it seemed. Incongruous fancies piqued her sense of humour. If Pan could come leaping out of the woods, if ironical satyrs could seize and catch up those twentieth century women, and wild-eyed girls pluck the stiff men by the chins. The music suggested it, but who had come to listen to the music? “I have been hunting you through the crowd.” She turned sharply, with all the self-knowledge that she had won at Latimer rushing to the surface. A few words spoken in the midst of the crying of the violins. She felt the surprised nakedness of her emotions, that she was stripped for judgment, and that sanity would be whipped into her by the scourge of a strong man’s common sense. “I have not been here very long.” She met his eyes and held her breath. “I saw you with Lynette, but I could not make much headway.”