“Yes, as a Militant Suffragette.”
She detested the label with which she had to label herself, for she had a sure feeling that it would not impress him.
“I had wondered.”
His voice was level and unprejudiced.
“Then it doesn’t shock you?”
“No, because I know what life may have been for you, trying to sell art to pork-butchers. It is hard not to become bitter. Won’t you let me hear the whole story?”
They were in the rosery, close to a seat set back in a recess cut in the yew hedge. Eve thought of that day when she had found him watching Guinevere.
“Would you listen?”
“I have been listening ever since the autumn, trying to catch any sounds that might come to me from where you were.”
They sat down, about two feet apart, half turned towards each other. But Eve did not look at Canterton. She looked at the stone paths, the pruned rose bushes, the sky, the outlines of the distant firs. Words came slowly at first, but in a while she lost her self-consciousness. She felt that she could tell him everything, and she told him everything, even her adventure with Hugh Massinger.