'... Des roses! des roses encore!
Je les adore à la souffrance.
Elles ont la sombre attirance
Des choses qui donnent la mort.'
'Nauseating!' he cried, flinging the book from him.
Certainly the book was Eve's. Certainly she had been in the room, for no one else would or could have drawn that mask of a faun on the blotting paper. He looked at it carelessly, then with admiration; what malicious humour she had put into those squinting eyes, that slanting mouth! He turned the blotting paper idly—how like Eve to draw on the blotting paper!—and came on other drawings: a demon, a fantastic castle, a half-obliterated sketch of himself. Once he found his name, in elaborate architectural lettering, repeated all over the page. Then he found a letter of which the three
first words: 'Eternal, exasperating Eve!' and the last sentence, ' ... votre réveil qui doit être charmant dans le désordre fantaisiste de votre chambre,' made him shut the blotter in a scurry of discretion.
Here were all the vivid traces of her passage, but where was she? Loneliness and the lack of occupation oppressed him. He lounged away from the writing-table, out into the wide passage which ran all round the central court. He paused there, his hands in his pockets, and called again,—
'Eve!'
'Eve!' the echoing passage answered startlingly.
Presently another more tangible voice came to him as he stood staring disconsolately through the windows into the court.
'Were you calling Mith Eve, Mathter Julian? The'th rethting. Thall I tell her?'
He was pleased to see Nana, fat, stayless, slipshod, slovenly, benevolent. He kissed her, and told her she was fatter than ever.