"Evelyn, have you grown thin lately?"
"My dresses have all grown too big. Things stretch so!"
Jean lifted the slight hand, and looked it over attentively.
"Rings don't stretch—do they?" laughed Evelyn. "I'm in danger of losing mine. It is all right, Jean—nothing but want of interest in life. I can't eat, and Miss Moggridge gives me no peace . . . I'm so tired of it all—and of her! If I could only manage to see the dear creature once a day, for an hour or two, we should get on. But every day, and all day!—Sometimes I don't know how to breathe."
"Only—"
"You look exactly as Mr. Trevelyan did this morning. I was prowling round the Church, and I came across him—or he came across me. Somehow, I had a confidential fit—one does with some people, you know—and I told him what I was feeling. Not about Miss Moggridge: there was no need to drag her name in: Only that everything seemed 'stale and unprofitable!'"
"And he said—"
"Said I was wrong, quite plainly. The feeling might be inevitable—perhaps physical—but I was wrong to give in to it. He told me, almost sternly, that life ought not to be empty for me—that I ought to find an object, if I have not one. He spoke of poverty of aim, and living too much for self . . . It is all true, no doubt, but—Do you find him stern? I did not expect it."
"No," Jean said wonderingly.
"I suppose he thinks mine a mere butterfly existence, all for pleasure. And yet—"