“Yes.”
“I hope you were careful.”
“Of course. I told them I was on a walking tour. I dare say I shan’t see them again.”
“No. I don’t think you’d better.”
Something in Joan Gaunt’s voice annoyed her. It was quietly but harshly dictatorial, and Eve stiffened.
“I don’t think you need worry. I can look after my own affairs.”
“Did you live in Basingford?”
“No. Out in the country.”
Lizzie Straker and Joan Gaunt exchanged glances. Something had happened to the woman in Eve, a something that was so patent and yet so mysterious that even these two fanatics noticed it and were puzzled. Had she looked into a mirror before entering the sitting-room, she would have been struck by a physical transfiguration of which she was for the moment unconscious. She had changed into a more spring-like and more sensitive study of herself. There was the indefinable suggestion of bloom upon fruit. Her face looked fuller, her skin more soft, her lips redder, her eyes brighter yet more elusive. She had been bathing in deep and magic waters and had emerged with a shy tenderness hovering about her mouth, and an air of sensuous radiance.
Supper was cleared away. The lamp was replaced on the table. Joan Gaunt brought out a note-book and her cypher-written itinerary. Lizzie Straker lit a cigarette.