Before very long she realised that she was listening to a thinker thinking aloud in the presence of the one woman who understood. He was so confident, so strong, so much above the hedgerows of circumstance, that she began to be more afraid for his sake than for her own. His words seemed ready to sweep her away into a rare and intimate future. It was ideal, innocent, almost boyish. He mapped out plans for her; talked of what they would create; declared for a yearly show of her pictures at Fernhill, and that her work must be made known in London. They could take the Goethe Gallery. Then he wanted pictures of the French and Italian gardens. She could make a tour, sketch the Riviera, paint rhododendrons and roses by the Italian lakes, and bring him back studies of Swiss meadows all blue and green and white in May or June. She had a future. He talked of it almost with passion, as though it were something that was very precious to his pride. Eve’s heart grew heavy. She began to feel a mute pity for Canterton and for herself. Her vision became so terribly clear and frank that she saw all that his idealist’s eyes did not see, and felt all that he was too big and too magnanimous to feel. He did not trouble to understand the little world about him. Its perspective was not his perspective, and it had no knowledge of colour. She became more and more silent, until this silence of hers was like a pool of water without a ripple, yet its passivity had a positive effect upon Canterton’s consciousness. His eyes began to watch her face and to ask questions. “Don’t you see all this?” “Oh, yes, I see it all!” He was puzzled. “Perhaps it does not strike you as real?” She turned her face away. “Don’t you know that sometimes things may seem too real?” He began to be absorbed into her silence of a minute ago. Eve made an effort, and picked up a brush. She guessed that something was happening in the heart of the man beside her, and she wondered whether the cold and conventional light of a more worldly wisdom would break in and enable him to understand. “Eve!” “Yes!” She kept on with her work. “Do you think that I have been talking like a fool?” “Oh, no, not that.” “Then——” She made herself meet his eyes. “Sometimes the really fine things are so impossible. That’s why life may be so sad.” * * * * * CHAPTER XVI JAMES CANTERTON AWAKES