She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved. She felt that the door was shut. After a while she began in imagination a conversation with Eve. "You _see_ the trouble was," she said and saw Eve's downcast believing admiring sympathetic face, "Fräulein talked to me about manner, she simply wanted me to grimace, _simply_. _You_ know--be like other people." Eve laughed. "Yes, I know." "You see? _Simply._" "Well, if you wanted to stay, why couldn't you?" "I simply couldn't; you know how people are." "But you can act so splendidly." "But you can't keep it up." "Why not?" "_Eve._ There you are, you see, you always go back." "I mean I think it would be simply lovely. If I were clever like you I should do it all the time, be simply always gushing and 'charming.'" Then she reminded Eve of the day they had walked up the lane to the Heath talking over all the manners they would like to have--and how Sarah suddenly in the middle of supper had caricatured the one they had chosen. "Of course you overdid it," she concluded, and Eve crimsoned and said, "Oh yes, I know it was my fault. But you could have begun all over again in Germany and been quite different." "Yes, I know I thought about that.... But if you knew as much of the world as I do...." Eve stared, showing a faint resentment. Miriam thought of Eve's many suitors, of her six months' betrothal, of her lifelong peace-making, her experiment in being governess to the two children of an artist--a little green-robed boy threatening her with a knife. "Yes, but I mean if you had been about." "I know," smiled Eve confidently. "You mean if I were you. Go on. I know. Explain, old thing." "Well, I mean of course if you are a governess in a school you _can't_ be jolly and charming. You can't be idiotic or anything.... I did think about it. Don't tell anybody. But I thought for a little while I might go into a family--one of the girls' families--the German girls, and begin having a German manner. Two of the girls asked me. One of them was ill and went away--that Pomeranian one I told you about. Well, then, I didn't tell you about that little one and her sister--they asked me to go to them for the holidays. The youngest said--it was _so_ absurd--'you shall marry my bruzzer--he is mairchant--very welty'--absurd." "_Not_ absurd--you probably _would_ have, away from that school." "D'you think so?" "Yes, you would have been a regular German, fat and jolly and laughing." "I know. My dear I thought about it. You may imagine. I wondered if I ought." "Why didn't you try?" Why not? Why was she not going to try? Eve would, she was sure in her place....