Eve had been suffering, suffering for Canterton, Lynette and herself. She saw life so clearly now—the lights and shadows, the sunlit spaces, the sinister glooms, the sharp, conventional horizons. Canterton did not know how much of the woman there was in her, how very primitive and strong were the emotions that had risen to the surface of her consciousness. The compact would be too perilous. She knew in her heart of hearts that the youth in her desired more than a spiritual dream, and she was trying to harden herself, to build up barriers, to smother this splendid thing, this fire of the gods. She had taken her work out into the garden, and was striving against a sense of perfunctoriness and the conviction that the life at Fernhill could not last. She had more than hinted at this to Canterton, bracing herself against his arguments, and against all the generous steadfastness of his homage that made the renunciation harder for her to bear. And now an impetuous tenderness attacked her at white heat, a thing that came with glowing hair and glowing mouth, and arms that clung. Lynette had run up the lane in front of Canterton, and Lynette was to make Eve Carfax suffer. “Oh, Miss Eve, it isn’t true, is it?” “What isn’t true, dear heart?” “That you are going right away.” Eve felt a thickness at the throat. All that was best in life seemed conspiring to tempt and to betray her. “I may have to go, dear.” “But why—why, when we love you so much? Aren’t you happy?” “When I am with you, yes. But there are all sorts of things that you wouldn’t understand.” “Oh, but I could!” “Perhaps some day you will.” “But, Miss Eve, you won’t really go, will you?” Canterton came in at the white gate, and Eve’s eyes reproached him over the glowing head of the child. “It is ungenerous of you,” they said, “to let the child try and persuade me.” She hugged Lynette with sudden passion. “I don’t want to go, dear, but some big devil fairy is telling me I shall have to.” She was shy of Canterton, and ready to hide behind the child, for there was a grim purposefulness about his idealism that made her afraid. His eyes hardly left her, and, though they held her sacred, they would have betrayed everything to the most disinterested of observers. “I thought I would work at home on some of these sketches.” “And Lynette and I have been making a fire in the Wilderness. We missed you.” Eve felt stifled. Lynette was looking up into her face, and she was fingering the white lace collar round the child’s neck. She knew that she must face Canterton. It was useless to try to shirk the challenge of such a man. “Isn’t it close to-day? Lynette, dear, what about some raspberries? I’m so thirsty.” “Where are they, Miss Eve? Aren’t they over?” “No, they are a late kind. You know, round behind the house. Ask Anne for a dish.” “I’ll get a rhubarb leaf, and pick the biggest for you.” “Dear heart, we’ll share them.”