Eve’s evenings were very lonely. Sometimes Kate Duveen came up from Bloomsbury, but she was a busy woman, and worked and read most nights. If it was fine, Eve went out and walked, wandering round outside Highbury Fields, or down the quiet Canonbury streets, or along Upper Street or Holloway Road. It was very dismal, and these walks made her feel even more lonely than the evenings spent in her room. It seemed such a drifting, solitary existence. Who cared? To whom did it matter whether she went out or stayed at home? As for her sitting-room, she could not get used to the cheap red plush suite, the sentimental pictures, the green and yellow carpet, the disastrous ornaments, the pink and green tiles in the grate. Her own workaday belongings made it a little more habitable, but she felt like Iolanthe in a retired licensed victualler’s parlour. The nights when Kate Duveen came up from Bloomsbury were full of intelligent relief. They talked, argued, compared ambitions and ideals, and trusted each other with intimate confessions. Several weeks passed before Eve gave Kate Duveen some account of that summer at Fernhill, and Kate Duveen looked stiff and hard over it, and showed Canterton no mercy. “It always seems to be a married man!” Eve was up in arms on the other side. “He was different.” “Oh, yes, I know!” “Kate, I hate you when you talk like this.” “Hate me as much as you like, my dear, you will see with my eyes some day. I have no patience with men.” Eve softened her passionate partisanship, and tried to make her friend understand. “Till one has gone through it one does not know what it means. After all, we can’t stamp out Nature, and all that is beautiful in Nature. I, for one, don’t want to. It may have made me suffer. It was worth it, just to be loved by that child.” “Children are not much better than little savages. Don’t dream sentimental dreams about children. I remember what a little beast I was.” “There will always be some part of me that you won’t understand, Kate.” “Perhaps. I’ve no patience with men—selfish, sexual fools. Let’s talk about work.” * * * * * CHAPTER XXIII LIFE AND LETTERS Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave the pause in Eve’s week of scribbling and reading, and drawing at desk and table. She was infinitely glad of the leisure when it came, only to discover that it often brought a retrospective sadness that could not be conjured away.