"Where is Elizabeth?" I asked.
"Elizabeth," she said, "has gone sailing with Pukkie. You might have known it. Now, what were you doing, and why were you doing it?"
I have found the truth to serve me best, and I would not tell Eve other than the truth in any littlest thing. So I told her all, and showed her the matter all set forth in the book. And she was interested and pleased, and would learn wigwagging herself.
"You must teach me, Adam," she said, "and we will do it together."
And that pleased me mightily, that we do it together. And she clasped my arm in both her hands, and bent forward and looked up into my face. And in her eyes as she looked was even greater tenderness than was wont to be, and that was a marvel; and there was a great joy too.
"Tell me, Adam," she said softly. "Why did you do it? What set you at it?"
"The nature that God gave me," I said, "or conscience, which is the same thing. I do not know. It—it is hard, Eve, to be forty-three when one would be twenty-three—for a reason. As for the signalling," I added, "that is nothing much, save that we be learning it together."
"I know," she said. "A symptom."
I did not know what she meant, whether my conscience or the signalling. But still she was looking up at me with joy in her eyes, and happiness; and she gave a little soft cry and a little happy laugh, and she squeezed my arm between her hands.
"Oh, Adam, Adam!" she cried low. "I love you—you don't know how much. And I don't wish that I was twenty-three. Do you know why?"