Madame Lafarge gave a picnic which preceded the day of the elections, and to Julian Davenant it seemed that he was entering a cool, dark cavern roofed over with mysterious greenery after riding in the heat across a glaring plain. The transition from the white Herakleion to the deep valley, shut in by steep, terraced hills covered with olives, ilexes, and myrtles—a valley profound, haunted, silent, hallowed by pools of black-green shadow—consciousness of the transition stole over him soothingly, as his pony picked its way down the stony path of the hill-side. He had refused to accompany the others. Early in the morning he had ridden over the hills, so early that he had watched the sunrise, and had counted, from a summit, the houses on Aphros in the glassy limpidity of the Grecian dawn. The morning had been pure as the treble notes of a violin, the sea below bright as a pavement of diamonds. The Islands lay, clear and low, delicately yellow, rose, and lilac, in the serene immensity of the dazzling waters. They seemed to him to contain every element of enchantment; cleanly of line as cameos, yet intangible as a mirage, rising lovely and gracious as Aphrodite from the white flashes of their foam, fairy islands of beauty and illusion in a sea of radiant and eternal youth.

A stream ran through the valley, and near the banks of the stream, in front of a clump of ilexes, gleamed the marble columns of a tiny ruined temple. Julian turned his pony loose to graze, throwing himself down at full length beside the stream and idly pulling at the orchids and magenta cyclamen which grew in profusion. Towards midday his solitude was interrupted. A procession of victorias accompanied by men on horseback began to wind down the steep road into the valley; from afar he watched them coming, conscious of distaste and boredom, then remembering that Eve was of the party, and smiling to himself a little in relief. She would come, at first silent, unobtrusive, almost sulky; then little by little the spell of their intimacy would steal over him, and by a word or a glance they would be linked, the whole system of their relationship developing itself anew, a system elaborated by her, as he well knew; built up of personal, whimsical jokes; stimulating, inventive, she had to a supreme extent the gift of creating such a web, subtly, by meaning more than she said and saying less than she meant; giving infinite promise, but ever postponing fulfilment.

'A flirt?' he wondered to himself, lazily watching the string of carriages in one of which she was.

But she was more elemental, more dangerous, than a mere flirt. On that account, and because of her wide and penetrative intelligence, he could not relegate her to the common category. Yet he thought he might safely make the assertion that no man in Herakleion had altogether escaped her attraction. He thought he might apply this generalisation from M. Lafarge, or Malteios, or Don Rodrigo Valdez, down to the chasseur who picked up her handkerchief. (Her handkerchief! ah, yes! she could always be traced, as in a paper-chase, by her scattered possessions—a handkerchief, a glove, a cigarette-case, a gardenia, a purse full of money, a powder-puff—frivolities doubly delightful and doubly irritating in a being so terrifyingly elemental, so unassailably and sarcastically intelligent.) Eve, the child he had known unaccountable, passionate, embarrassing, who had written him the precocious letters on every topic in a variety of tongues, imaginative exceedingly, copiously illustrated, bursting occasionally into erratic and illegible verse; Eve, with her desperate and excessive passions; Eve, grown to womanhood, grown into a firebrand! He had been entertained, but at the same time slightly offended, to find her grown; his conception of her was disarranged; he had felt almost a sense of outrage in seeing her heavy hair piled upon her head; he had looked curiously at the uncovered nape of her neck, the hair brushed upwards and slightly curling, where once it had hung thick and plaited; he had noted with an irritable shame the softness of her throat in the evening dress she had worn when first he had seen her. He banished violently the recollection of her in that brief moment when in his anger he had lifted her out of her bed and had carried her across the room in his arms. He banished it with a shudder and a revulsion, as he might have banished a suggestion of incest.

Springing to his feet, he went forward to meet the carriages; the shadowed valley was flicked by the bright uniforms of the chasseurs on the boxes and the summer dresses of the women in the victorias; the laughter of the Danish Excellency already reached his ears above the hum of talk and the sliding hoofs of the horses as they advanced cautiously down the hill, straining back against their harness, and bringing with them at every step a little shower of stones from the rough surface of the road. The younger men, Greeks, and secretaries of legations, rode by the side of the carriages. The Danish Excellency was the first to alight, fat and babbling in a pink muslin dress with innumerable flounces; Julian turned aside to hide his smile. Madame Lafarge descended with her customary weightiness, beaming without benevolence but with a tyrannical proprietorship over all her guests. She graciously accorded her hand to Julian. The chasseurs were already busy with wicker baskets.

'The return to Nature,' Alexander Christopoulos whispered to Eve.

Julian observed that Eve looked bored and sulky; she detested large assemblies, unless she could hold their entire attention, preferring the more intimate scope of the tÊte-À-tÊte. Amongst the largest gathering she usually contrived to isolate herself and one other, with whom she conversed in whispers. Presently, he knew, she would be made to recite, or to tell anecdotes, involving imitation, and this she would perform, at first languidly, but warming with applause, and would end by dancing—he knew her programme! He rarely spoke to her, or she to him, in public. She would appear to ignore him, devoting herself to Don Rodrigo, or to Alexander, or, most probably, to the avowed admirer of some other woman. He had frequently brought his direct and masculine arguments to bear against this practice. She listened without replying, as though she did not understand.

Fru Thyregod was more than usually sprightly.

'Now, Armand, you lazy fellow, bring me my camera; this day has to be immortalised; I must have pictures of all you beautiful young men for my friends in Denmark. Fauns in a Grecian grave! Let me peep whether any of you have cloven feet.'

Madame Lafarge put up her lorgnon, and said to the Italian Minister in a not very low voice,—

'I am so fond of dear Fru Thyregod, but she is terribly vulgar at times.'

There was a great deal of laughter over Fru Thyregod's sally, and some of the young men pretended to hide their feet beneath napkins.

'Eve and Julie, you must be the nymphs,' the Danish Excellency went on.

Eve took no notice; Julie looked shy, and the sisters Christopoulos angry at not being included.

'Now we must all help to unpack; that is half the fun of the picnic,' said Madame Lafarge, in a business-like tone.

Under the glare of her lorgnon Armand and Madame Delahaye attacked one basket; they nudged and whispered to one another, and their fingers became entangled under the cover of the paper wrappings. Eve strolled away, Valdez followed her. The Persian Minister who had come unobtrusively, after the manner of a humble dog, stood gently smiling in the background. Julie Lafarge never took her adoring eyes off Eve. The immense Grbits had drawn Julian on one side, and was talking to him, shooting out his jaw and hitting Julian on the chest for emphasis. Fru Thyregod, with many whispers, collected a little group to whom she pointed them out, and photographed them.

'Really,' said the Danish Minister peevishly, to Condesa Valdez, 'my wife is the most foolish woman I know.'

During the picnic every one was very gay, with the exception of Julian, who regretted having come, and of Miloradovitch, of whom Eve was taking no notice at all. Madame Lafarge was especially pleased with the success of her expedition. She enjoyed the intimacy that existed amongst all her guests, and said as much in an aside to the Roumanian Minister.

'You know, chÈre Excellence, I have known most of these dear friends so long; we have spent happy years together in different capitals; that is the best of diplomacy: ce qu'il y a de beau dans la carriÈre c'est qu'on se retrouve toujours.'

'It is not unlike a large family, one may say,' replied the Roumanian.

'How well you phrase it!' exclaimed Madame Lafarge. 'Listen, everybody: His Excellency has made a real mot d'esprit, he says diplomacy is like a large family.'

Eve and Julian looked up, and their eyes met.

'You are not eating anything, Ardalion Semeonovitch,' said Armand (he had once spent two months in Russia) to Miloradovitch, holding out a plate of sandwiches.

'No, nor do I want anything,' said Miloradovitch rudely, and he got up, and walked away by himself.

'Dear me! ces Russes! what manners!' said Madame Lafarge, pretending to be amused; and everybody looked facetiously at Eve.

'I remember once, when I was in Russia, at the time that Stolypin was Prime Minister,' Don Rodrigo began, 'there was a serious scandal about one of the Empress's ladies-in-waiting and a son of old Princess Golucheff—you remember old Princess Golucheff, Excellency? she was a Bariatinsky, a very handsome woman, and Serge Radziwill killed himself on her account—he was a Pole, one of the Kieff Radziwills, whose mother was commonly supposed to be au mieux with Stolypin (though Stolypin was not at all that kind of man; he was trÈs province), and most people thought that was the reason why Serge occupied such a series of the highest Court appointments, in spite of being a Pole—the Poles were particularly unpopular just then; I even remember that Stanislas Aveniev, in spite of having a Russian mother—she was an Orloff, and her jewels were proverbial even in Petersburg—they had all been given her by the Grand Duke Boris—Stanislas Aveniev was obliged to resign his commission in the Czar's guard. However, Casimir Golucheff....' but everybody had forgotten the beginning of his story and only Madame Lafarge was left politely listening.

Julian overheard Eve reproducing, in an undertone to Armand, the style and manner of Don Rodrigo's conversation. He also became aware that, between her sallies, Fru Thyregod was bent upon retaining his attention for herself.

He was disgusted with all this paraphernalia of social construction, and longed ardently for liberty on Aphros. He wondered whether Eve were truly satisfied, or whether she played the part merely with the humorous gusto of an artist, caught up in his own game; he wondered to what extent her mystery was due to her life's pretence?

Later, he found himself drifting apart with the Danish Excellency; he drifted, that is, beside her, tall, slack of limb, absent of mind, while she tripped with apparent heedlessness, but with actual determination of purpose. As she tripped she chattered. Fair and silly, she demanded gallantry of men, and gallantry of a kind—perfunctory, faintly pitying, apologetic—she was accorded. She had enticed Julian away, with a certain degree of skill, and was glad. Eve had scowled blackly, in the one swift glance she had thrown them.

'Your cousin enchants Don Rodrigo, it is clear,' Fru Thyregod said with malice as they strolled.

Julian turned to look back. He saw Eve sitting with the Spanish Minister on the steps of the little temple. In front of the temple, the ruins of the picnic stained the valley with bright frivolity; bits of white paper fluttered, tablecloths remained spread on the ground, and laughter echoed from the groups that still lingered hilariously; the light dresses of the women were gay, and their parasols floated above them like coloured bubbles against the darkness of the ilexes.

'What desecration of the Dryads' grove,' said Fru Thyregod, 'let us put it out of sight,' and she gave a little run forward, and then glanced over her shoulder to see if Julian were following her.

He came, unsmiling and leisurely. As soon as they were hidden from sight among the olives, she began to talk to him about himself, walking slowly, looking up at him now and then, and prodding meditatively with the tip of her parasol at the stones upon the ground. He was, she said, so free. He had his life before him. And she talked about herself, of the shackles of her sex, the practical difficulties of her life, her poverty, her effort to hide beneath a gay exterior a heart that was not gay.

'Carl,' she said, alluding to her husband, 'has indeed charge of the affairs of Norway and Sweden also in Herakleion, but Herakleion is so tiny, he is paid as though he were a Consul.'

Julian listened, dissecting the true from the untrue; although he knew her gaiety was no effort, but merely the child of her innate foolishness, he also knew that her poverty was a source of real difficulties to her, and he felt towards her a warm, though a bored and slightly contemptuous, friendliness. He listened to her babble, thinking more of the stream by which they walked, and of the little magenta cyclamen that grew in the shady, marshy places on its banks.

Fru Thyregod was speaking of Eve, a topic round which she perpetually hovered in an uncertainty of fascination and resentment.

'Do you approve of her very intimate friendship with that singer, Madame Kato?'

'I am very fond of Madame Kato myself, Fru Thyregod.'

'Ah, you are a man. But for Eve ... a girl.... After all, what is Madame Kato but a common woman, a woman of the people, and the mistress of Malteios into the bargain?'

Fru Thyregod was unwontedly serious. Julian had not yet realised to what extent Alexander Christopoulos had transferred his attentions to Eve.

'You know I am an unconventional woman; every one who knows me even a little can see that I am unconventional. But when I see a child, a nice child, like your cousin Eve, associated with a person like Kato, I think to myself, "Mabel, that is unbecoming."'

She repeated,—

'And yet I have been told that I was too unconventional. Yes, Carl has often reproached me, and my friends too. They say, "Mabel, you are too soft-hearted, and you are too unconventional." What do you think?'

Julian ignored the personal. He said,—

'I should not describe Eve as a "nice child."'

'No? Well, perhaps not. She is too ... too....' said Fru Thyregod, who, not having very many ideas of her own, liked to induce other people into supplying the missing adjective.

'She is too important,' Julian said gravely.

The adjective in this case was unexpected. The Danish Excellency could only say,—

'I think I know what you mean.'

Julian, perfectly well aware that she did not, and caring nothing whether she did or no, but carelessly willing to illuminate himself further on the subject, pursued,—

'Her frivolity is a mask. Her instincts alone are deep; how deep, it frightens me to think. She is an artist, although, she may never produce art. She lives in a world of her own, with its own code of morals and values. The Eve that we all know is a sham, the product of her own pride and humour. She is laughing at us all. The Eve we know is entertaining, cynical, selfish, unscrupulous. The real Eve is ...' he paused, and brought out his words with a satisfied finality, 'a rebel and an idealist.'

Then, glancing at his bewildered companion, he laughed and said,—

'Don't believe a word I say, Fru Thyregod: Eve is nineteen, bent only upon enjoying her life to the full.'

He knew, nevertheless, that he had swept together the loose wash of his thought into a concrete channel; and rejoiced.

Fru Thyregod passed to a safer topic. She liked Julian, and understood only one form of excitement.

'You bring with you such a breath of freshness and originality,' she said, sighing, 'into our stale little world.'

His newly-found good humour coaxed him into responsiveness.

'No world can surely ever be stale to you, Fru Thyregod; I always think of you as endowed with perpetual youth and gaiety.'

'Ah, Julian, you have perfect manners, to pay so charming a compliment to an old woman like me.'

She neither thought her world stale or little, nor herself old, but pathos had often proved itself of value.

'Everybody knows, Fru Thyregod, that you are the life and soul of Herakleion.'

They had wandered into a little wood, and sat down on a fallen tree beside the stream. She began again prodding at the ground with her parasol, keeping her eyes cast down. She was glad to have captured Julian, partly for her own sake, and partly because she knew that Eve would be annoyed.

'How delightful to escape from all our noisy friends,' she said; 'we shall create quite a scandal; but I am too unconventional to trouble about that. I cannot sympathise with those limited, conventional folk who always consider appearances. I have always said, "One should be natural. Life is too short for the conventions." Although, I think one should refrain from giving pain. When I was a girl, I was a terrible tomboy.'

He listened to her babble of coy platitudes, contrasting her with Eve.

'I never lost my spirits,' she went on, in the meditative tone she thought suitable to tÊte-À-tÊte conversations—it provoked intimacy, and afforded agreeable relief to her more social manner; a woman, to be charming, must be several-sided; gay in public, but a little wistful philosophy was interesting in private; it indicated sympathy, and betrayed a thinking mind,—'I never lost my spirits, although life has not always been very easy for me; still, with good spirits and perhaps a little courage one can continue to laugh, isn't that the way to take life? and on the whole I have enjoyed mine, and my little adventures too, my little harmless adventures; Carl always laughs and says, "You will always have adventures, Mabel, so I must make the best of it,"—he says that, though he has been very jealous at times. Poor Carl,' she said reminiscently, 'perhaps I have made him suffer; who knows?'

Julian looked at her; he supposed that her existence was made up of such experiments, and knew that the arrival of every new young man in Herakleion was to her a source of flurry and endless potentialities which, alas, never fulfilled their promise, but which left her undaunted and optimistic for the next affray.

'Why do I always talk about myself to you?' she said, with her little laugh; 'you must blame yourself for being too sympathetic.'

He scarcely knew how their conversation progressed; he wondered idly whether Eve conducted hers upon the same lines with Don Rodrigo Valdez, or whether she had been claimed by Miloradovitch, to whom she said she was engaged. Did she care for Miloradovitch? he was immensely rich, the owner of jewels and oil-mines, remarkably good-looking; dashing, and a gambler. At diplomatic gatherings he wore a beautiful uniform. Julian had seen Eve dancing with him; he had seen the Russian closely following her out of a room, bending forward to speak to her, and her ironical eyes raised for an instant over the slow movement of her fan. He had seen them disappear together, and the provocative poise of her white shoulders, and the richness of the beautiful uniform, had remained imprinted on his memory.

He awoke with dismay to the fact that Fru Thyregod had taken off her hat.

She had a great quantity of soft, yellow hair into which she ran her fingers, lifting its weight as though oppressed. He supposed that the gesture was not so irrelevant to their foregoing conversation, of which he had not noticed a word, as it appeared to be. He was startled to find himself saying in a tone of commiseration,—

'Yes, it must be very heavy.'

'I wish that I could cut it all off,' Fru Thyregod cried petulantly. 'Why, to amuse you, only look....' and to his horror she withdrew a number of pins and allowed her hair to fall in a really beautiful cascade over her shoulders. She smiled at him, parting the strands before her eyes.

At that moment Eve and Miloradovitch came into view, wandering side by side down the path.

Of the four, Miloradovitch alone was amused. Julian was full of a shamefaced anger towards Fru Thyregod, and between the two women an instant enmity sprang into being like a living and visible thing. The Russian drew near to Fru Thyregod with some laughing compliment; she attached herself desperately to him as a refuge from Julian. Julian and Eve remained face to face with one another.

'Walk with me a little,' she said, making no attempt to disguise her fury.

'My dear Eve,' he said, when they were out of earshot, 'I should scarcely recognise you when you put on that expression.'

He spoke frigidly. She was indeed transformed, her features coarsened and unpleasing, her soft delicacy vanished. He could not believe that he had ever thought her rare, exquisite, charming.

'I don't blame you for preferring Fru Thyregod,' she returned.

'I believe your vanity to be so great that you resent any man speaking to any other woman but yourself,' he said, half persuading himself that he was voicing a genuine conviction.

'Very well, if you choose to believe that,' she replied.

They walked a little way in angry silence.

'I detest all women,' he added presently.

'Including me?'

'Beginning with you.'

He was reminded of their childhood with its endless disputes, and made an attempt to restore their friendship.

'Come, Eve, why are we quarrelling? I do not make you jealous scenes about Miloradovitch.'

'Far from it,' she said harshly.

'Why should he want to marry you?' he began, his anger rising again. 'What qualities have you? Clever, seductive, and entertaining! But, on the other hand, selfish, jealous, unkind, pernicious, indolent, vain. A bad bargain. If he knew you as well as I.... Jealousy! It amounts to madness.'

'I am perhaps not jealous where Miloradovitch is concerned,' she said.

'Then spare me the compliment of being jealous of me. You wreck affection; you will wreck your life through your jealousy and exorbitance.'

'No doubt,' she replied in a tone of so much sadness that he became remorseful. He contrasted, moreover, her violence, troublesome, inconvenient, as it often was, with the standardised and distasteful little inanities of Fru Thyregod and her like, and found Eve preferable.

'Darling, you never defend yourself; it is very disarming.'

But she would not accept the olive-branch he offered.

'Sentimentality becomes you very badly, Julian; keep it for Fru Thyregod.'

'We have had enough of Fru Thyregod,' he said, flushing.

'It suits you to say so; I do not forget so easily. Really, Julian, sometimes I think you very commonplace. From the moment you arrived until to-day, you have never been out of Fru Thyregod's pocket. Like Alexander, once. Like any stray young man.'

'Eve!' he said, in astonishment at the outrageous accusation.

'My little Julian, have you washed the lap-dog to-day? Carl always says, "Mabel, you are fonder of your dogs than of your children—you are really dreadful," but I don't think that's quite fair,' said Eve, in so exact an imitation of Fru Thyregod's voice and manner that Julian was forced to smile.

She went on,—

'I expect too much of you. My imagination makes of you something which you are not. I so despise the common herd that I persuade myself that you are above it. I can persuade myself of anything,' she said scathingly, wounding him in the recesses of his most treasured vanity—her good opinion of him; 'I persuade myself that you are a Titan amongst men, almost a god, but in reality, if I could see you without prejudice, what are you fit for? to be Fru Thyregod's lover!'

'You are mad,' he said, for there was no other reply.

'When I am jealous, I am mad,' she flung at him.

'But if you are jealous of me....' he said, appalled. 'Supposing you were ever in love, your jealousy would know no bounds. It is a disease. It is the ruin of our friendship.'

'Entirely.'

'You are inordinately perverse.'

'Inordinately.'

'Supposing I were to marry, I should not dare—what an absurd thought—to introduce you to my wife.'

A truly terrible expression came into her eyes; they narrowed to little slits, and turned slightly inwards; as though herself aware of it, she bent to pick the little cyclamen.

'Are you trying to tell me, Julian....'

'You told me you were engaged to Miloradovitch.'

She stood up, regardless, and he saw the tragic pallor of her face. She tore the cyclamen to pieces beneath her white fingers.

'It is true, then?' she said, her voice dead.

He began to laugh.

'You do indeed persuade yourself very easily.'

'Julian, you must tell me. You must. Is it true?'

'If it were?'

'I should have to kill you—or myself,' she replied with the utmost gravity.

'You are mad,' he said again, in the resigned tone of one who states a perfectly established fact.

'If I am mad, you are unutterably cruel,' she said, twisting her fingers together; 'will you answer me, yes or no? I believe it is true,' she rushed on, immolating herself, 'you have fallen in love with some woman in England, and she, naturally, with you. Who is she? You have promised to marry her. You, whom I thought so free and splendid, to load yourself with the inevitable fetters!'

'I should lose caste in your eyes?' he asked, thinking to himself that Eve was, when roused, scarcely a civilised being. 'But if you marry Miloradovitch you will be submitting to the same fetters you think so degrading.'

'Miloradovitch,' she said impatiently, 'Miloradovitch will no more ensnare me than have the score of people I have been engaged to since I last saw you. You are still evading your answer.'

'You will never marry?' he dwelt on his discovery.

'Nobody that I loved,' she replied without hesitation, 'but, Julian, Julian, you don't answer my question?'

'Would you marry me if I wanted you to?' he asked carelessly.

'Not for the world, but why keep me in suspense? only answer me, are you trying to tell me that you have fallen in love? if so, admit it, please, at once, and let me go; don't you see, I am leaving Fru Thyregod on one side, I ask you in all humility now, Julian.'

'For perhaps the fiftieth time since you were thirteen,' he said, smiling.

'Have you tormented me long enough?'

'Very well: I am in love with the Islands, and with nothing and nobody else.'

'Then why had Fru Thyregod her hair down her back? you're lying to me, and I despise you doubly for it,' she reverted, humble no longer, but aggressive.

'Fru Thyregod again?' he said, bewildered.

'How little I trust you,' she broke out; 'I believe that you deceive me at every turn. Kato, too; you spend hours in Kato's flat. What do you do there? You write letters to people of whom I have never heard. You dined with the Thyregods twice last week. Kato sends you notes by hand from Herakleion when you are in the country. You use the Islands as dust to throw in my eyes, but I am not blinded.'

'I have had enough of this!' he cried.

'You are like everybody else,' she insisted; 'you enjoy mean entanglements, and you cherish the idea of marriage. You want a home, like everybody else. A faithful wife. Children. I loathe children,' she said violently. 'You are very different from me. You are tame. I have deluded myself into thinking we were alike. You are tame, respectable. A good citizen. You have all the virtues. I will live to show you how different we are. Ten years hence, you will say to your wife, "No, my dear, I really cannot allow you to know that poor Eve." And your wife, well trained, submissive, will agree.'

He shrugged his shoulders, accustomed to such storms, and knowing that she only sought to goad him into a rage.

'In the meantime, go back to Fru Thyregod; why trouble to lie to me? And to Kato, go back to Kato. Write to the woman in England, too. I will go to Miloradovitch, or to any of the others.'

He was betrayed into saying,—

'The accusation of mean entanglements comes badly from your lips.'

In her heart she guessed pretty shrewdly at his real relation towards women: a self-imposed austerity, with violent relapses that had no lasting significance, save to leave him with his contemptuous distaste augmented. His mind was too full of other matters. For Kato alone he had a profound esteem.

Eve answered his last remark,—

'I will prove to you the little weight of my entanglements, by dismissing Miloradovitch to-day; you have only to say the word.'

'You would do that—without remorse?'

'Miloradovitch is nothing to me.'

'You are something to him—perhaps everything.'

'Cela ne me regarde pas,' she replied. 'Would you do as much for me? Fru Thyregod, for instance? or Kato?'

Interested and curious, he said,—

'To please you, I should give up Kato?'

'You would not?'

'Most certainly I should not. Why suggest it? Kato is your friend as much as mine. Are all women's friendships so unstable?'

'Be careful, Julian: you are on the quicksands.'

'I have had enough of these topics,' he said, 'will you leave them?'

'No; I choose my own topics; you shan't dictate to me.'

'You would sacrifice Miloradovitch without a thought, to please me—why should it please me?—but you would not forgo the indulgence of your jealousy! I am not grateful. Our senseless quarrels,' he said, 'over which we squander so much anger and emotion.' But he did not stop to question what lay behind their important futility. He passed his hand wearily over his hair, 'I am deluded sometimes into believing in their reality and sanity. You are too difficult. You ... you distort and bewitch, until one expects to wake up from a dream. Sometimes I think of you as a woman quite apart from other women, but at other times I think you live merely by and upon fictitious emotion and excitement. Must your outlook be always so narrowly personal? Kato, thank Heaven, is very different. I shall take care to choose my friends amongst men, or amongst women like Kato,' he continued, his exasperation rising.

'Julian, don't be so angry: it isn't my fault that I hate politics.'

He grew still angrier at her illogical short-cut to the reproach which lay, indeed, unexpressed at the back of his mind.

'I never mentioned politics. I know better. No man in his senses would expect politics from any woman so demoralisingly feminine as yourself. Besides, that isn't your rÔle. Your rÔle is to be soft, idle; a toy; a siren; the negation of enterprise. Work and woman—the terms contradict one another. The woman who works, or who tolerates work, is only half a woman. The most you can hope for,' he said with scorn, 'is to inspire—and even that you do unconsciously, and very often quite against your will. You sap our energy; you sap and you destroy.'

She had not often heard him speak with so much bitterness, but she did not know that his opinions in this more crystallised form dated from that slight moment in which he had divined her own untrustworthiness.

'You are very wise. I forget whether you are twenty-two or twenty-three?'

'Oh, you may be sarcastic. I only know that I will never have my life wrecked by women. To-morrow the elections take place, and, after that, whatever their result, I belong to the Islands.'

'I think I see you with a certain clearness,' she said more gently, 'full of illusions, independence, and young generosities—nous passons tous par lÀ.'

'Talk English, Eve, and be less cynical; if I am twenty-two, as you reminded me, you are nineteen.'

'If you could find a woman who was a help and not a hindrance?' she suggested.

'Ah!' he said, 'the Blue Bird! I am not likely to be taken in; I am too well on my guard.—Look!' he added, 'Fru Thyregod and your Russian friend; I leave you to them,' and before Eve could voice her indignation he had disappeared into the surrounding woods.