Her daily walks from Highbury to Miss Champion’s helped to accentuate the tendencies of these moods of hers. Sometimes Kate Duveen would walk a great part of the way back with her, and Eve, who was the more impressionable of the two, led her friend into many suggestive discussions. Upper Street, Islington, saddened her. It seemed so typical of the social scheme from which she was trying to escape.
“Doesn’t all this make you feel that it is a city of slaves?”
“That depends, perhaps, on one’s digestion.”
“But does it? These people are slaves, without knowing it. Things are thrust on them, and they think they choose.”
“Nothing but suggestion, after all.”
“Look, I will show you.”
Eve stopped in front of a picture shop.
“What’s your opinion of all that is in there?”
“Hopeless, sentimental tosh, of course. But it suits the people.”
“It is what is given them, and they take it. There is not one thing in that window that has any glimmer of genius, or even of distinction.”