“But I am glad. Aren’t you? I can paint all day like you, and we’ll have picnics, and make daddy take us on the river.” “Of course, I’m glad you’ll be with me.” “Vancie can’t play. You see she’s so very old and grown up.” “I don’t think she is much older than I am.” “Oh, Miss Eve, years and years! Besides, you’re so beautiful.” “You wicked flatterer.” “I’m not a flatterer. I’m sure daddy thinks so. I know he does.” Eve felt herself flushing, and her heart misgave her, for the lips of the child made her thrill and feel afraid. She had accepted the new life tentatively yet recklessly, trying to shut her eyes to the possible complexities, and to carry things forward with a candour that could not be questioned. She was painting the full opulence of one of the August borders, with Lynette beside her on a stool, Lynette who pretended to dabble in colours, but loved to make Eve talk. It was a day without wind; all sunlight, blue sky, and white clouds, with haze on the hills, and somnolence everywhere. Yet Eve was haunted by the sound of the splashing of the water in the Latimer gardens, a seductive but restless memory that penetrated all her thoughts. “Wasn’t it funny mother not wanting me to wear a black frock?” “I don’t know, dear.” “But why should she mind?” Why, indeed? Eve found herself visualising Gertrude Canterton’s sallow face and thin, jerky figure, and she felt chilled and discouraged. What manner of woman was this Gertrude Canterton, this champion of charities, this eager egoist, this smiler of empty smiles? Had she the eyes and ears, the jealous instincts of a woman? Did she so much as realise that the place she called her home hid the dust and dry bones of something that should have been sacred? Was she, in truth, so blindly self-sufficient, so smothered in the little vanities of little public affairs that she had forgotten she was a wife? If so, what an impossible woman, and what a menace to herself and others. “Mother doesn’t care for flowers, Miss Eve.” “Oh, how do you know?” “I’ve never seen her pick any. And she can’t arrange a vase. I’ve seen her try.” “But she may be fond of them, all the same.” “Then why doesn’t she come out here with daddy?” “Perhaps she has too much to do.” “But I never see her doing anything, like other people. I mean mending things, and all that. She’s always going out, or writing letters, or having headaches.” Eve had a growing horror of letting Lynette discuss her mother. The child was innocent enough, but it seemed treacherous and unfair to listen, and made Eve despise herself, and shiver with a sense of nearness to those sexual problems that are covered with the merest crust of make-believe. “Oh, here’s Vancie!”