it was a curious coincidence that mrs. carfax should have come to the end of her white wool that night, put her pins aside and left her work unfinished.

it was the last time that eve heard the familiar clicking of the ivory pins, for mrs. carfax died quietly in her sleep, and was found with a placid smile on her face, her white hair neatly parted into two plaits, and her hands lying folded on the coverlet. she had died like a child, dreaming, and smiling in the midst of her dreams.

for the moment eve was incredulous as she bent over the bed, for her mother’s face looked so fresh and tranquil. then the truth came to her, and she stood there, shocked and inarticulate, trying to realise what had happened. sudden and poignant memories rose up and stung her. she remembered that she had almost despised the little old lady who lay there so quietly, and now, in death, she saw her as the child, a pathetic creature who had never escaped from a futile childishness, who had never known the greater anguish and the greater joys of those whose souls drink of the deep waters. a great pity swept eve away, a choking compassion, an inarticulate remorse. she was conscious of sudden loneliness. all the memories of long ago, evoked by the dead face, rose up and wounded her. she knelt down, hid her face against the pillow, uttering in her heart that most human cry of “mother.”

canterton was strangely restless that morning. up at six, he wandered about the gardens and nurseries, and lavender, who came to him about some special work that had to be done in one of the glasshouses, found him absent and vague. the life of the day seemed in abeyance, remaining poised at yesterday, when the moon hung over the black ridge of the fir woods by orchards corner. daylight had come, but canterton was still in the moonlight, sitting in that chair on the dew-wet grass, dreaming, to be startled again by eve’s sudden presence. he wondered what she had thought, whether she had suspected that he had been imagining her his wife, orchards corner their home, and he, the man, sitting there in the moonlight, while the woman he loved let down her dark hair before the mirror in their room.

if lavender could not wake james canterton, breakfast and gertrude canterton did. there were half a dozen of gertrude’s friends staying in the house, serious women who had travelled with batches of pamphlets and earnest-minded magazines, and who could talk sociology even at breakfast. canterton came in early and found gertrude scribbling letters at the bureau in the window. none of her friends were down yet, and a maid was lighting the spirit lamps under the egg-boiler and the chafing dishes.

“oh, james!”

“yes.”

she was sitting in a glare of light, and canterton was struck by the thinness of her neck, and the way her chin poked forward. she had done her hair in a hurry, and it looked streaky and meagre, and the colour of wet sand. and this sunny morning the physical repulsion she inspired in him came as a shock to his finer nature. it might be ungenerous, and even shameful, but he could not help considering her utter lack of feminine delicacy, and the hard, gaunt outlines of her face and figure.

“i want you to take mrs. grigg batsby round the nurseries this morning. she is such an enthusiast.”

“i’ll see what time i have.”

“do try to find time to oblige me sometimes. i don’t think you know how much work you make for me, especially when you find some eccentric way of insulting everybody at once.”

“what do you mean, gertrude?”

the maid had left the room, and gertrude canterton half turned in her chair. her shoulders were wriggling, and she kept fidgeting with her pen, rolling it to and fro between her thumb and forefinger.

“can’t you imagine what people say when you put up wire fences, and have the gates locked on the day of our garden party?”

“do you think that whiteley would hold a party in his business premises?”

“oh, don’t be so absurd! i wonder why people come here.”

“i really don’t know. certainly not to look at the flowers.”

“then why be so eccentrically offensive?”

“because there are always a certain number of enthusiastic ladies who like to get something for nothing. i believe it is a feminine characteristic.”

mrs. grigg batsby came sailing into the room, gracious as a great galleon freighted with the riches of peru. she was an extremely wealthy person, and her consciousness of wealth shone like a golden lustre, a holy effulgence that penetrated into every corner. her money had made her important, and filled her with a sort of after-dinner self-satisfaction. she issued commands with playful regality, ordered the clergy hither and thither, and had a half humorous and half stately way of referring to any male thing as “it.”

“my dear mrs. batsby, i have just asked james to take you round this morning.”

the lady rustled and beamed.

“and is ‘it’ agreeable? i have always heard that ‘its’ time is so precious.”

“james will be delighted.”

“obliging thing.”

canterton was reserved and a little stiff.

“i shall be ready at eleven. i can give you an hour, mrs. batsby.”

“‘it’ is really a humorist, mrs. canterton. that barbed wire! i don’t think i ever came across anything so delightfully original.”

gertrude frowned and screwed her shoulders.

“i cannot see the humour.”

“but i think mrs. batsby does. i have a good many original plants on my premises.”

“oh, you wicked, witty thing! and original sin?”

“yes, it is still rather prevalent.”

there was no queen’s progress through the fernhill grounds for mrs. grigg batsby that morning, for by ten o’clock her very existence had been forgotten, and she was left reading the athenæum, and wondering, with hauteur, what had become of the treacherous “it.” women like mrs. grigg batsby have a way of exacting as a right what the average man would not presume to ask as a favour. that they should happen to notice anything is in itself a sufficient honour conferred upon the recipient, who becomes a debtor to them in service.

canterton had drifted in search of eve, had failed to find her, and was posing himself with various questions, when one of the under-gardeners brought him a letter. it had taken the man twenty minutes of hide and seek to trace canterton’s restless wanderings.

“just come from orchards corner, sir. the young lady brought it.”

“miss carfax?”

“no, sir, the young lady.”

“i see. all right, gibbs.”

canterton opened the letter, and stood reading it in the shade of a row of cypresses.

“dear mr. canterton,—mother died in the night. she must have died in her sleep. i always knew it might happen, but i never suspected that it would happen so suddenly. it has numbed me, and yet made me think.

“i wanted you to know why i did not come to-day.

“eve carfax.”

canterton stood stock still, his eyes staring at eve’s letter. he was moved, strongly moved, as all big-hearted people must be by the sudden and capricious presence of death. the little white-haired, chattering figure had seemed so much alive the night before, so far from the dark waters, with her child’s face and busy hands. and eve had written to tell him the news, to warn him why she had not come to fernhill. this letter of hers—it asked nothing, and yet its very muteness craved more than any words could ask. to canterton it was full of many subtle and intimate messages. she wanted him to know why she had stayed away, though she did not ask him to come to her. she had let him know that she was stricken, and that was all.

he put the letter in his pocket, forgot about mrs. grigg batsby, and started for orchards corner.

all the blinds were down, and the little house had a blank and puzzled look. the chair that he had used the previous night still stood in the middle of one of the lawns. canterton opened and closed the gate noiselessly, and walked up the gravel path.

eve herself came to the door. he had had a feeling that she had expected him to come to her, and when he looked into her eyes he knew that he had not been wrong. she was pale, and quite calm, though her eyes looked darker and more mysterious.

“will you come in?”

there was no hesitation, no formalism. each seemed to be obeying an inevitable impulse.

canterton remained silent. eve opened the door of the drawing-room, and he followed her. she sat down on one of the green plush chairs, and the dim light seemed part of the silence.

“i thought you might come.”

“of course i came.”

he put his hat on the round table. eve glanced round the room at the pictures, the furniture and the ornaments.

“i have been sitting here in this room. i came in here because i realised what a ghastly prig i have been at times. i wanted to be hurt—and hurt badly. isn’t it wonderful how death strips off one’s conceit?”

he leant forward with his elbows on his knees, a listener—one who understood.

“how i used to hate these things, and to sneer at them. i called them victorian, and felt superior. tell me, what right have we ever to feel superior?”

“we are all guilty of that.”

“guilty of despising other colour schemes that don’t tone with ours. i suppose each generation is more or less colour-blind in its sympathies. why, she was just a child—just a child that had never grown up, and these were her toys. oh, i understand it now! i understood it when i looked at her child’s face as she lay dead. the curse of being one of the clever little people!”

“you are not that.”

she lay back and covered her eyes with her hands. it was a still grief, the grief of a pride that humbles itself and makes no mere empty outcry.

canterton watched her, still as a statue. but his eyes and mouth were alive, and within him the warm blood seemed to mount and tremble in his throat.

“i think she was quite happy.”

“did i do very much?”

“she was very proud of you in her way. i could see that.”

“don’t!”

“you are making things too deep, too difficult. you say, ‘she was just a child.’”

her hands dropped from her face.

“yes.”

“your moods passed over her and were not noticed. some people are not conscious of clouds.”

she mused.

“yes, but that does not make me feel less guilty.”

“it might make you feel less bitter regret.”

canterton sat back in his chair, spreading his shoulders and drawing in a deep breath.

“have you wired to your relatives?”

“they don’t exist. father was an only son, and mother had only one brother. he is a doctor in a colliery town, and one of the unlucky mortals. it would puzzle him to find the train fare. he married when he was fifty, and has about seven children.”

“very well, you will let me do everything.”

he did not speak as a petitioner, but as a man who was calmly claiming a most natural right.

she glanced at him, and his eyes dominated hers.

“but—i can’t bother you——”

“i can arrange everything. if you will tell me what you wish—what your mother would have wished.”

“it will have to be very quiet. you see, we——”

“i understand all that. would you like lynette to come and see you?”

“yes, oh, yes! i should like lynette to come.”

he pondered a moment, staring at the carpet with its crude patterning of colours, and when again he began to speak he did not raise his head to look at her.

“of course, this will make no difference to the future?”

“i don’t know.”

“tell me exactly.”

“all mother’s income dies with her. i have the furniture, and a little money in hand.”

“would you live on here, or take rooms?”

she hesitated.

“perhaps.”

his eyes rose to meet hers.

“i want you to stay. we can work together. i’m not inventing work for you. it’s there. it has been there for the last two or three years.”

he spoke very gently, and yet some raw surface within her was touched and hurt. her mouth quivered with sensitive cynicism.

“a woman, when she is alone, must get money—somehow. it is bitter bread that many of us have to eat.”

“i did not mean to make it taste bitter.”

her mouth and eyes softened instantly.

“you? no. you are different. and that——”

“well?”

“and that makes it more difficult, in a way.”

“why should it?”

“it does.”

she bent her head as though trying to hide her face from him. he did not seem to be conscious of what was happening, and of what might happen. his eyes were clear and far sighted, but they missed the foreground and its complex details.

he left his chair and came and stood by her.

“eve.”

“yes?”

“did i say one word about money? well, let’s have it out, and the dross done with. i ask you to be my illustrator, colour expert, garden artist—call it what you like. the work is there, more work than you can manage. i offer you five hundred a year.”

she still hid her face from him.

“that is preposterous. but it is like you in its generosity. but i——”

“think. you and i see things as no two other people see them. it is an age of gardens, and i am being more and more pestered by people who want to buy plants and ideas. why, you and i could create some of the finest things in colour. think of it. you only want a little more technical knowledge. the genius is there.”

she appealed to him with a gesture of the hand.

“stop, let me think!”

he walked to the window and waited.

presently eve spoke, and the strange softness of her voice made him wonder.

“yes, it might be possible.”

“then you accept?”

“yes, i accept.”