“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.