She was very sad when Kate had gone, and in the great reading-room such a rush of loneliness came over her that she had but little heart for work. She fell to thinking of Canterton, and of the work they had done together, and the thought of Hugh Massinger and that flat of his in Purbeck Street made her feel that life had cheapened and deteriorated. There was something unwholesome about the man and his art. It humiliated her to think that sincerity had thrust this meaner career upon her.
Punctually at two o’clock she rang the bell of the flat in Purbeck Street. Adolf admitted her. She disliked Adolf’s smile. It was a recent development, and it struck her as being latently offensive.
Hugh Massinger was curled up on the lounge, reading one of Shaw’s plays. He loathed Shaw, but read him as a dog worries something that it particularly detests. He sat up, his moonish eyes smiling, and Eve realised for the first time that his eyes and Adolf’s were somewhat alike.
She sat down at the table, and began to arrange her notebooks.
“You look triste to-day.”
“Do I?”
“I am growing very understanding towards your moods.”
She caught the challenge on the shield of a casual composure.
“I lost a friend this morning.”
“Not by death?”