The work depressed Eve. Her fellow workers were hardly more enlivening. They belonged to a distinct type, the neutral type that cannot be appealed to either as man or woman. Meals were served at a long table in one of the lower rooms, and Eve noticed that her neighbours did not in the least care what they ate. They got through a meal as quickly as possible, talking hard all the time. Now Eve did care about what she ate, and whether it was delicately served. She had the palate of a healthy young woman, and it mattered to her whether she had ragged mutton and rice pudding every day, or was piqued by something with a flavour.
She was carnal. She told herself so flatly one afternoon as she went up to her bedroom, and the charge produced a thrill of natural laughter. She had a sudden wild desire to run out and play, to be greedy as a healthy child is greedy, to tumble hay in a hay field, to take off her clothes and bathe in the sea. The natural vitality in her turned suddenly from all this sour, quarrelsome, pessimistical campaigning and demanded life—the life of feeling and seeing.
The house oppressed her, so she put on her hat and escaped, and made her way into the park. May was in, green May, with lush grass and opening leaves. The sun shone. There was sparkle in the air. One thought of wood nymphs dancing on forest lawns while fauns piped and jigged, and the great god Pan delighted himself with wine and honey. It was only a London park, but it was the nearest thing to Nature that Eve could find. Her heart expanded suddenly. An irrational, tremulous joyousness came over her. She wanted to sing, to weep, to throw herself down and bury her face in the cool green grass. The country in May! She had a swift and passionate desire for the country, for green glooms and quiet waters and meadows dusted with gold. To get out of this loathsome complication of tragedies, to breathe smokeless air, to think of things other than suicides, prostitutions, treacheries, the buying and selling of souls.
She felt like a child before a holiday, and then she thought of Lynette. What a vision of wholesomeness and of joy! It was like cool water bubbling out of the earth, like a swallow gliding, a thrush singing at dawn. She could not bear to think of wasting all the spring in London. She must escape somehow, escape to a healthier outlook, to cooler thinking.
When she went back Mrs. Falconer sent for her. Eve wondered afterwards whether it was a coincidence or not that Mrs. Falconer should have said what she did that day.
“You have not been looking well. You want a change!”
“I almost think I do.”
“You don’t like me. It is a pity.”
Eve was taken by surprise.
“Don’t like you?”