“That’s an idea!”
“She has always hung back and let us do the work.”
They looked at each other across the table.
“All right. We had better go and scout by ourselves to-morrow.”
“Galahad ought to be here by lunch time.”
“We can make our arrangements. Leave after tea, hide in the woods, and do the job after dark.”
Eve slept well, in spite of all her problems. She woke to the sound of a blackbird singing in the garden, and the bird’s song suited her waking mood, being just the thing that Nature suggested. She slipped out of bed, drew back the chintz curtains, and looked out on a dewy lawn all dappled with yellow sunlight. The soul of the child and of the artist in her exulted. She wanted to play with colours, to express herself, to make pictures. Yes; but she wanted more than that, and she knelt down in her nightdress before the looking-glass, and leaning her elbows on the table, stared into her own eyes.
She questioned herself.
“Woman, can you trust yourself? It is a big thing, such a big thing, both for him, and for you.”
It was a sulky breakfast table that morning. Lizzie Straker had the grumps, and appeared to be on the watch for something that could be pounced on. She was ready to provoke Eve into contradicting her, but the real Eve, the Eve that mattered, was elsewhere. She hardly heard what Lizzie Straker said.