Her profile came sharply against the lamplight. Then she pushed the chair back, rose, and walked to the window. The lower sash was up. She rested her hands on the sill. “Is it you?” The light was behind her, and her face vague and shadowy, but he had a feeling that she was afraid. Her bare white forearms, with the hands resting on the window-sill, looked hard and rigid. “Have I frightened you?” “Perhaps—a little.” “I wanted to talk to you.” She did not answer him for the moment. “I am all alone to-night.” “I thought you had the girl with you.” “I let her go down to the village.” He had come to her in a fog of mystical love, and through the haze of his vision her set and human face became the one real thing in the world. Her voice had a wounded sound, and she spoke as from a little distance. There was resistance here, a bleak dread of something, and yet a desire that what was inevitable should be understood. “You’ll forgive me?” “Perhaps.” “I felt I must talk to you.” “As you talked yesterday morning?” “Why not?” “I—I thought perhaps that you had understood.” His full consciousness of all that was in his heart would not suffer him to feel such a thing as shame. But a great tenderness reached out to her, because he had heard her utter a cry of pain. “Have I hurt you by coming here?” She stared beyond him, trying to think. “We were to live like good comrades, like fellow artists, were we not?” “I told you how the future offers us beautiful friendship.” She made a little impatient movement. “I knew it would be difficult while you were talking. And now you are making it impossible.” “I cannot see it.” “You are blind—with a man’s blindness.” She leant her weight on her arms, and bending slightly towards him, spoke with peculiar gentleness. “You look at the horizon, you miss the little things. Perhaps I am more selfish and near-sighted, for your sake, if not for my own. Jim, don’t make me say what is hateful even to be thought.” It was the first time that she had called him by the familiar name, the name sacred to his lad’s days, and to the lips of his men friends. He stood looking up at her, for she was a little above him. “I like that word—Jim. But am I blind?” “Hopelessly.” “Can it hurt either of us, this comradeship? Why, Eve, child, how can I talk all the boyish stuff to you? It’s bigger, finer, less selfish than all that. I believe I could think of you as I think of Lynette—married some day to a good fellow——” She broke in with sudden passion. “No, you are wrong there—utterly wrong.” “Am I wrong—everywhere?” “Can’t you guess that it hurts terribly, all this? It’s so impossible, and you won’t see it. Let’s get back—back to yesterday.” “Eve, is there ever a yesterday?” She shivered and drew back a little. “Jim, don’t try to come too near me. You make me say it. You make me say the mean things.” “It’s not physical nearness.” “Ah, you may think that! But you are forgetting all the little people.”