lynette had a little black velvet frock that had been put away in a drawer, because it was somewhat tarnished and out of fashion. moreover, lynette had grown three or four inches since the black frock had been made, and even a queen of the fairies’ legs will lengthen. over this dress rose a contest in which lynette engaged both her mother and miss vance, and showed some of that tranquil and wise obstinacy that characterised her father.

lynette appeared for lessons, clad in this same black frock, and miss vance, being a matter-of-fact and good-naturedly dictatorial adult, proceeded to raise objections.

“lynette, what have you been doing?”

“what do you mean, vancie?”

“miss vance, if you please. who told you to put on that dress?”

“i told myself to do it.”

“then please tell yourself to go and change it. it is not at all suitable.”

“but it is.”

“my dear, don’t argue! you are quite two years too old for that frock.”

“mary can let it out.”

“go and change it!”

lynette had her moments of dignity, and this was an occasion for stateliness.

“vancie, don’t dare to speak to me like that! i’m in mourning.”

“in mourning! for whom?”

“miss eve’s mother, of course! miss eve is in mourning, and i know father puts on a black tie.”

“my dear, don’t be——”

“vancie, i am going to wear this frock. you’re not a great friend of miss eve’s, like me. she’s the dearest friend in the world.”

the governess felt that the dress was eccentric, and yet that lynette had a sentimental conviction that carried her cause through. miss vance happened to be in a tactless mood, and appealed to gertrude canterton, and to gertrude the idea of lynette going into mourning because a certain young woman had lost her mother was whimsical and absurd.

“lynette, go and change that dress immediately!”

it was then that canterton came out in his child. she was serenely and demurely determined.

“i must wear it, mother!”

“you will do nothing of the kind. the skirt is perfectly indecent.”

“why?”

“your—your knees are showing.”

“i am not ashamed of my knees.”

“lynette, don’t argue! understand that i will be obeyed. go and change that dress!”

“i am very sorry, mother, but i can’t. you don’t know what great deep friends me and miss eve are.”

neither ridicule nor fussy attempts at intimidation had any effect. there was something in the child’s eyes and manner that forbade physical coercion. she was sure in her sentiment, standing out for some ideal of sympathy that was fine and convincing to herself. lynette appealed to her father, and to her father the case was carried.

he sided with lynette, but not in lynette’s hearing.

“what on earth is there to object to, gertrude?”

“it is quite absurd, the child wanting to go into mourning because old mrs. carfax is dead.”

“children have a way of being absurd, and very often the gods are absurd with them. the child shall have a black frock.”

gertrude twitched her shoulders, and refused to be responsible for canterton’s methods.

“you are spoiling that child. i know it is quite useless for me to suggest anything.”

“you are not much of a child yourself, gertrude. i am. that makes a difference.”

canterton had his car out that afternoon and drove twenty miles to reading, with lynette on the seat beside him. he knew, better than any woman, what suited the child, so lynette had a black frock and a little quaker bonnet to wear for that other child, mrs. carfax, who was dead.

within a week eve was back at fernhill, painting masses of hollyhocks and sweet peas, with giant sunflowers and purple-spiked buddlea for a background. perhaps nothing had touched her more than lynette’s black frock and the impulsive sympathy that had suggested it.

“i’m so sorry, miss eve, dear. i do love you ever so much more now.”

and eve had never been nearer tears, with lynette snuggling up to her, one arm round her neck, and her warm breath on eve’s cheek.

it was holiday time, and miss vance’s authority was reduced to the supervision of country walks, and the giving of a daily piano lesson. punch, the terrier, accompanied them on their walks, and miss vance hated the dog, feeling herself responsible for punch’s improprieties. her month’s holiday began in a few days, and lynette had her eyes on five weeks of unblemished liberty.

“vancie goes on friday. isn’t it grand!”

“but you ought not to be so glad, dear.”

“but i am glad. aren’t you? i can paint all day like you, and we’ll have picnics, and make daddy take us on the river.”

“of course, i’m glad you’ll be with me.”

“vancie can’t play. you see she’s so very old and grown up.”

“i don’t think she is much older than i am.”

“oh, miss eve, years and years! besides, you’re so beautiful.”

“you wicked flatterer.”

“i’m not a flatterer. i’m sure daddy thinks so. i know he does.”

eve felt herself flushing, and her heart misgave her, for the lips of the child made her thrill and feel afraid. she had accepted the new life tentatively yet recklessly, trying to shut her eyes to the possible complexities, and to carry things forward with a candour that could not be questioned. she was painting the full opulence of one of the august borders, with lynette beside her on a stool, lynette who pretended to dabble in colours, but loved to make eve talk. it was a day without wind; all sunlight, blue sky, and white clouds, with haze on the hills, and somnolence everywhere. yet eve was haunted by the sound of the splashing of the water in the latimer gardens, a seductive but restless memory that penetrated all her thoughts.

“wasn’t it funny mother not wanting me to wear a black frock?”

“i don’t know, dear.”

“but why should she mind?”

why, indeed? eve found herself visualising gertrude canterton’s sallow face and thin, jerky figure, and she felt chilled and discouraged. what manner of woman was this gertrude canterton, this champion of charities, this eager egoist, this smiler of empty smiles? had she the eyes and ears, the jealous instincts of a woman? did she so much as realise that the place she called her home hid the dust and dry bones of something that should have been sacred? was she, in truth, so blindly self-sufficient, so smothered in the little vanities of little public affairs that she had forgotten she was a wife? if so, what an impossible woman, and what a menace to herself and others.

“mother doesn’t care for flowers, miss eve.”

“oh, how do you know?”

“i’ve never seen her pick any. and she can’t arrange a vase. i’ve seen her try.”

“but she may be fond of them, all the same.”

“then why doesn’t she come out here with daddy?”

“perhaps she has too much to do.”

“but i never see her doing anything, like other people. i mean mending things, and all that. she’s always going out, or writing letters, or having headaches.”

eve had a growing horror of letting lynette discuss her mother. the child was innocent enough, but it seemed treacherous and unfair to listen, and made eve despise herself, and shiver with a sense of nearness to those sexual problems that are covered with the merest crust of make-believe.

“oh, here’s vancie!”

eve glanced up and saw the governess approaching along the brick-paved path. miss vance was a matter-of-fact young person, but she was a woman, with some of the more feminine attributes a little exaggerated. she was suburban, orthodox as to her beliefs, absolutely without imagination, yet healthily inquisitive.

“music, lynette! what a nice bit of colour to paint, miss carfax.”

“quite oriental, isn’t it?”

these two women looked at each other, and eve did not miss the apprizing and critical interest in miss vance’s eyes. she was a little casual towards eve, with a casualness that suggested tacit disapproval. the surface was hard, the poise unsympathetic.

“you ought to have good weather for your holiday. where are you going?”

“brighton!”

“oh, brighton!”

“we always go to brighton!”

“a habit?”

“we are a family of habits.”

she held out a large and rather red hand to lynette, but lynette was an individualist. she, too, understood that miss vance was a habit, a time-table, a schedule, anything but a playmate. they went off together, miss vance with a last apprizing glance at eve.

one woman’s attitude may have a very subtle influence on the mood of another. most women understand each other instinctively, perhaps through some ancient sex-language that existed long before sounds became words. eve knew quite well what had been exercising miss vance’s mind, that she had been handling other people’s intimacies, calculating their significance, and their possible developments. and eve felt angry, rebellious, scornful, troubled. as a woman she resented the suggestiveness of this other woman’s curiosity.

ten minutes later, when canterton strolled into the walled garden, he found eve sitting idle, her hands lying in her lap. he saw her as a slim black figure posed in thought, with the border unfurled before her like some rich tapestry, with threads of purple and gold upon a ground of green.

she turned to him with a smile.

“lynette has just gone.”

he did not suspect that her smile was a defence and a screen.

“i hope the child does not interfere with your work.”

“no. she lets me be quiet when something particularly delicate has to be done.”

canterton brought up a garden chair.

“will it bother you if i take lynette’s place?”

“no.”

“i think i am a little too big for her stool.”

eve resumed her painting, but she soon discovered that her attention flowed more strongly towards the man beside her than towards the flowers in the border. the tapestry kept blurring its outlines and shifting its colours, and she played with the work, becoming more and more absorbed in what canterton was saying. and yet she was striving all the while to keep a space clear for her own individuality, so that her thoughts could move without merely following his.

before very long she realised that she was listening to a thinker thinking aloud in the presence of the one woman who understood. he was so confident, so strong, so much above the hedgerows of circumstance, that she began to be more afraid for his sake than for her own. his words seemed ready to sweep her away into a rare and intimate future. it was ideal, innocent, almost boyish. he mapped out plans for her; talked of what they would create; declared for a yearly show of her pictures at fernhill, and that her work must be made known in london. they could take the goethe gallery. then he wanted pictures of the french and italian gardens. she could make a tour, sketch the riviera, paint rhododendrons and roses by the italian lakes, and bring him back studies of swiss meadows all blue and green and white in may or june. she had a future. he talked of it almost with passion, as though it were something that was very precious to his pride.

eve’s heart grew heavy. she began to feel a mute pity for canterton and for herself. her vision became so terribly clear and frank that she saw all that his idealist’s eyes did not see, and felt all that he was too big and too magnanimous to feel. he did not trouble to understand the little world about him. its perspective was not his perspective, and it had no knowledge of colour.

she became more and more silent, until this silence of hers was like a pool of water without a ripple, yet its passivity had a positive effect upon canterton’s consciousness. his eyes began to watch her face and to ask questions.

“don’t you see all this?”

“oh, yes, i see it all!”

he was puzzled.

“perhaps it does not strike you as real?”

she turned her face away.

“don’t you know that sometimes things may seem too real?”

he began to be absorbed into her silence of a minute ago. eve made an effort, and picked up a brush. she guessed that something was happening in the heart of the man beside her, and she wondered whether the cold and conventional light of a more worldly wisdom would break in and enable him to understand.

“eve!”

“yes!”

she kept on with her work.

“do you think that i have been talking like a fool?”

“oh, no, not that.”

“then——”

she made herself meet his eyes.

“sometimes the really fine things are so impossible. that’s why life may be so sad.”