“You might try it.”
“Oh, yes, let’s! Let’s go down to Orchards Corner now—at once!”
Eve had been suffering, suffering for Canterton, Lynette and herself. She saw life so clearly now—the lights and shadows, the sunlit spaces, the sinister glooms, the sharp, conventional horizons. Canterton did not know how much of the woman there was in her, how very primitive and strong were the emotions that had risen to the surface of her consciousness. The compact would be too perilous. She knew in her heart of hearts that the youth in her desired more than a spiritual dream, and she was trying to harden herself, to build up barriers, to smother this splendid thing, this fire of the gods.
She had taken her work out into the garden, and was striving against a sense of perfunctoriness and the conviction that the life at Fernhill could not last. She had more than hinted at this to Canterton, bracing herself against his arguments, and against all the generous steadfastness of his homage that made the renunciation harder for her to bear.
And now an impetuous tenderness attacked her at white heat, a thing that came with glowing hair and glowing mouth, and arms that clung.
Lynette had run up the lane in front of Canterton, and Lynette was to make Eve Carfax suffer.
“Oh, Miss Eve, it isn’t true, is it?”
“What isn’t true, dear heart?”
“That you are going right away.”
Eve felt a thickness at the throat. All that was best in life seemed conspiring to tempt and to betray her.