“Motherhood, and all that it means, is the natural business of woman.
“Therefore motherhood should be cherished, as it has never yet been cherished.
“Therefore, every healthy woman should be permitted to have a child.”
And here Eve folded up the pamphlet abruptly, and pushed it away across the table.
After breakfast she went into the garden, played with Billy for five minutes, and then wandered to and fro and up and down the stone paths of the rock garden. There were scores of rare plants, all labelled, but the labels were turned so that the names were hidden. Eve had been less than a week in the cottage, but from the very first evening she had put herself to school, to learn the names of all these rock plants. After three days’ work she had been able to reverse the labels, and to go round tagging long names to various diminutive clumps of foliage and flowers, and only now and again had she to stretch out a hand and look at a label.
All that was feminine and expressive in her opened to the sun that morning. She went in about nine and changed her frock, putting on a simple white dress with a low-cut collar that showed her throat. Looking in her mirror with the tender carefulness of a woman who is beloved, it pleased her to think that she needed one fleck of colour, a red rosebud over the heart. She touched her dark hair with her fingers, and smiled mysteriously into her own eyes.
She knew that she was ambitious, that her pride in her comrade challenged the pride in herself. His homage should not be fooled. It was a splendid spur, this love of his, and the glow at her heart warmed all that was creative and compassionate in her. This very cottage betrayed how his thoughts had worked for her. A big cupboard recessed behind the oak panelling held several hundred books, the books she needed in her work, and the books that he knew would please her. There was a little studio built out at the back of the cottage, but he had left it bare, for her own self to do with it what she pleased. It was this restraint, this remembering of her individuality that delighted her. He had given her so much, but not everything, because he had realised that it is a rare pleasure to a working woman to spend her money in accumulating the things that she desires.
On her way through the plantations she met Lavender, and she and Lavender were good friends. The enthusiast in him approved of Eve. She had eyes to see, and she did not talk the woolly stuff that he associated with most women. Her glimpses of beauty were not adjectival, but sharp and clear-cut, proof positive that she saw the things that she pretended to see.
He offered to carry her easel, and she accepted the offer.
“Have you seen those Japanese irises in the water garden, Miss Carfax?”