"She?... Who?" I asked in surprise, now fully awake again.
Evie mentioned a name. At the next table another crimson match went off, leaving, as it died down fumily, the yellow twinklings of the garden a bilious green. I spoke slowly. The name she had mentioned had been that of my own former fiancée.
"Kitty Windus?" I said. "What about her?"
Evie made no answer, but only stroked her cheek against the cloth of my shoulder—a familiar gesture of hers.
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," I said.
Nor did I quite. I could not believe she was jealous. If Evie was jealous, never, never woman had had less cause. Except as the bitterest of mockeries, I had never been engaged to any woman but herself, for only that old horrible poverty and despair of mine had been the cause of my playing a trick with more of the falsely theatrical about it than of real life—the deliberate engaging of myself to one woman as a means to getting another. The impossible situation had lasted for a few months only, and had then ended in the abrupt vanishing, without explanation, of Kitty Windus from that part of London in which she had lived. From that day to this I had not set eyes on her.
I leaned over Evie. "Dearest," I said gently, "do you mean that there's something you would like to know about Kitty?"
Then, with a little shock, she seemed to realise that I might think what in fact had for the moment crossed my mind—that she was jealous of Kitty.
"Oh, Jeff ... no, no—really no!" she assured me in tones of which there was no mistaking the sincerity. "I didn't mean that—poor thing!—I was only joking when I said there was something you wouldn't tell me! Oh, do see what I mean, dear! It's only because I'm so happy that I want everybody else to be—Kitty too—everybody! Really that's all, Jeff!"
It was not quite all, though it was enough to make my heart a little lighter. Mingled with it was something very human that only endeared her to me the more. Her glow and vitality had always put poor Kitty's skimpiness completely into the shade, and what ailed her now was that wistful longing of the victress to be magnanimous that is the uneasy aftercrop of triumph. On herself it had all the effect of a generosity, but that, and not jealousy, was really it....