ten minutes later eve saw canterton enter the rosery.

he was walking slowly, his hands in his pockets, pausing from time to time to examine some particular rose bush for any signs of blight or rust. eve’s place was in the very centre of this little secret world of colour and perfume, and the grey paths led away from her on every side like the ground plan of a maze. there was some resemblance, too, to a silver web with strands spread and hung with iridescent dewdrops flashing like gems. in the midst of it all was the woman, watching, waiting, a mystery even to herself, while the man approached half circuitously, taking this path, and now that, drawing nearer and nearer to that central, feminine thing throned in the thick of june.

canterton walked along the last path as though he had only just realised eve’s presence. she kept on with her work, looking down under lowered lashes at the sketching-block upon her knees.

“still working?”

“yes.”

“have you had any tea?”

“no.”

“i’ll have some sent out to you.”

“oh, please don’t bother.”

“you may as well make a habit of it when you are working here.”

she lifted eyes that smiled.

“i am so very human, that sweet cakes and a cup of fine china tea——”

“remain human. i have a very special blend. you shall have it sent out daily, and i will issue instructions as to the cakes. hallo!”

he had discovered the spoiling of guinevere.

“someone has taken that rose.”

his profile was turned to her, and she studied it with sympathetic curiosity.

“mrs. canterton and some friends have been here.”

“have they?”

“and a stout lady in black discovered guinevere, and produced a pair of scissors. i put in a word for the rose.”

he faced her, looking down with eyes that claimed her as a partisan.

“thank you.”

“i think the lady’s name is mrs. brocklebank.”

he was half angry, half amused.

“i might have suspected it. i suppose someone over-ruled your protest?”

“yes.”

she went on with her work, brushing in a soft background of grey stones and green foliage.

“was mrs. canterton here?”

“yes.”

her eyes remained fixed upon the rose in front of her, and the poise of her head and the aloofness of her eyes answered his question before he asked it.

“i want that rose most particularly. it has to go to one of the greatest rose experts in the country.”

“yes.”

“which way did they go?”

“back to the house, i think.”

“i’ll go and have your tea sent out. and i want to catch mrs. brocklebank.”

canterton started in pursuit of the lady, found that she had only just left the house, and that he would catch her in the drive. he intended to be quite frank with her, knowing her to be the most inveterate snatcher up of trifles, one of those over-enthusiastic people who will sneak a cutting from some rare plant and take it home wrapped up in a handkerchief. lavender had told him one or two tales about mrs. brocklebank, and how he had once surprised her in the rock garden busy with a trowel that she had brought in an innocent looking work-bag.

canterton overtook her just before she reached the lodge gates, and found guinevere being carried off as a victim in mrs. brocklebank’s belt.

“i am afraid you have taken a rose that should not have been touched.”

“oh, mr. canterton, i’m sure i haven’t!”

he looked whimsically at the rose perched on the top of a very ample curve.

“well, there it is! my wife ought to have warned you——”

“she pressed me to take it. my dear mr. canterton, how was i to know?”

“of course not.”

he was amused by her emphatic innocence, especially when, by dragging in eve carfax’s name, he could have suggested to her that he knew she was lying.

“you see, my wife knows nothing about flowers—what is valuable, and what isn’t.”

mrs. brocklebank began to boom.

“my dear mr. canterton, how can you expect it? i think it is very unreasonable of you. in fact, you ought to mark valuable flowers, so that other people should know.”

he smiled at her quite charmingly.

“i suppose i ought. i suppose i am really the guilty party. only, you see, my garden is really a shop, a big general store. and in a shop it is not supposed to be necessary to put notices on certain articles, ‘this article is not to be appropriated.’”

“mr. canterton!”

she took the rose out of her belt, and in doing so purposely broke the stalk off close to the calyx.

“i think you are a very horrid man. fancy suggesting——”

“i am a humorist, you know.”

“i am afraid i have broken the stalk.”

“it doesn’t matter. i can have it wired.”

he went and opened the lodge gates for her, and stood, hat in hand, as she passed out. he was smiling, but it was an uncomfortable sort of smile that sent mrs. brocklebank away wondering whether he was really quite a pleasant person or an ironical beast.

canterton took the rose to lavender, who was working through some of the stock lists in the office.

“nearly lost, but not quite, lavender.”

the foreman looked cynical, but said nothing.

“wire it up, and have it packed and sent off to mr. woolridge to-night. and, by the way, i have told mrs. brocklebank that if she wants any flowers in the future, she must apply to you.”

“i shan’t forget that little trowel of hers, sir, and our alpines.”

“put up a notice, ‘trowels not admitted.’ i am writing to mr. woolridge. oh, and there are those american people coming to-morrow, who want to be shown roses, and flowering shrubs. will you take them round? i fancy i shall be busy.”

canterton returned to the rosery, and, picking up a stray chair in one of the main paths, joined eve carfax, who had a little green japanese tea-tray on her lap. she was pouring out tea from a tiny brown teapot, her wrist making a white arch, her lashes sweeping her cheek.

“they have brought your tea all right?”

“yes.”

“what about cakes?”

she bent down and picked up a plate from the path.

“someone must fancy me a hungry schoolgirl.”

“it looks rather like it. how is the painting going?”

“i am rather pleased with it.”

“good. on show soon?”

“i have only to put in a few touches.”

he swung his chair round, and sat down as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to come and talk to her. her curious resemblance to lynette may have tricked him into a mood that was partly that of the playmate, partly that of the father. lynette, the child, had set him an impetuous example. “miss eve feels the fairies in the wood, daddy. she feels them there, just like me.” that was it. eve spoke and understood the same language as he and the child.

“i overtook mrs. brocklebank.”

“and rescued guinevere?”

“yes, and the good dragon pretended to be very innocent. i did not drag your name in, though i was reproved for not labelling things properly, and so inviting innocent old ladies to purloin flowers.”

“but you got the rose back?”

“yes, and she managed to break the stalk off short in pulling it out of her belt. i wonder if you can tell me why the average woman is built on such mean lines?”

she gave him a sudden questioning glance which said, “do you realise that you are going beneath the surface—that the real you in you is calling to the real me in me?”

he was looking at her intently, and there was something in his eyes that stirred a tremor of compassion in her.

“what i mean is, that the average woman seems a cad when she is compared to the average man. i mean, the women of the upper middle classes. i suppose it is because they don’t know what work is, and because they have always led selfish and protected lives. they haven’t the bigness of men—the love of fair-play.”

her eyes brightened to his.

“i know what you mean. if i described a girls’ school to you——”

“i should have the feminine world in miniature.”

“yes. the snobbery, the cult of convention, the little sneaking jealousies, all the middle class nastiness. i hated school.”

he was silent for some moments, his eyes looking into the distance. then he began to speak in his quiet and deliberate way, like a man gazing at some landscape and trying to describe all that he saw.

“life, in a neighbourhood like this, seems so shallow—so full of conventional fussiness. these women know nothing, and yet they must run about, like so many fashionable french clowns, doing a great deal, and nothing. i can’t get the hang of it. i suppose i am always hanging my head over something that has been born, or is growing. one gets right up against the wonder and mystery of life, the marvellous complex of growth and colour. it makes one humble, deliberate, rather like a big child. perhaps i lose my sense of social proportion, but i can’t fit myself into these feminine back yards. and some women never forgive one for getting into the wrong back yard.”

his eyes finished by smiling, half apologetically.

“it seems to me that most women would rather have their men respectable hypocrites than thinkers.”

she put the tray aside, and brushed some crumbs from her skirt.

“the older sort of woman, perhaps.”

“you mean——”

“generations of women have never had a fair chance. they had to dance to the man’s piping. and i think women are naturally conservative, sexually mistrustful of change—of new ideas.”

“they carry their sex into social questions?”

“or try to crush it. there is a sort of cry for equality—for the interplay of personality with personality—without all that——”

he bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees.

“have we men been guilty of making so many of our women fussy, conventional, pitiless fools? have you ever run up against the crass prejudice, the merciless, blind, and arrogant self-assurance of the ordinary orthodox woman?”

she answered slowly, “yes.”

he seemed to wait for her.

“well?”

“there is nothing to say.”

“absolute finality! oh, i know! everything outside the little rigid fence, ununderstandable, unmentionable! no vision, no real sympathy, no real knowledge. what can one do? i often wonder whether the child will grow up like that.”

“lynette?”

he nodded.

she looked at him with that peculiar brightening of the eyes and tender tremulousness of the mouth.

“oh, no! you see, she’s—she’s sensitive, and not a little woman in miniature. i mean, she won’t have the society shell hardened on her before her soul has done growing.”

his face warmed and brightened.

“by george, how you put things! that’s the whole truth in a nutshell. keep growing. keep the youngsters growing. smash away the crust of convention!”

she began to gather up her belongings, and canterton watched her cleaning her brushes and putting them back into their case. a subtle veil of shyness had fallen upon her. she had realised suddenly that he was no longer an impersonal figure sitting there and dispassionately discussing certain superficial aspects of life, but a big man who was lonely, a man who appealed to her with peculiar emphasis, and who talked to her as to one who could understand.

“i must be off home. i thought i should finish this to-day, but i will ask you not to look at it till to-morrow.”

“just as you please.”

she strapped her things together, rose, and turned a sudden and frank face to his.

“good-bye. i think lynette will be ever so safe.”

“i shall do my best to keep her away from the multitude of women.”

eve walked back through the pine woods to orchards corner, thinking of canterton and lynette, and of the woman who was too busy to know anything about flowers. how gertrude canterton had delivered an epigram upon herself by uttering those few words. she was just a restless shuttle in the social loom, flying to and fro, weaving conventional and unbeautiful patterns. and she was married to a man whose very life was part of the green sap of the earth, whose humility watched and wondered at the mystery of growth, whose heart was, in some ways, the heart of a child.

what a sacramental blunder!

she was a little troubled, yet conscious of a tremor of exultation. was it nothing to her that she was able to talk to such a man as this. he was big, massive, yet full of an exquisite tenderness. she had realised that when she had seen him with the child. he had talked, and half betrayed himself, yet she, the woman to whom he had talked, could forgive him that. he was not a man who betrayed things easily. his mouth and eyes were not those of a lax and self-conscious egoist.

eve found her mother sitting in the garden, knitting, and eve’s conscience smote her a little. orchards corner did not pulsate with excitements, and youth, with all its ardour, had left age to its knitting needles and wool.

“have you been lonely, mother?”

“lonely, my dear? why, i really never thought about it.”

eve was always discovering herself wasting her sentiments upon this placid old lady. mrs. carfax did not react as the daughter reacted. she was vegetative and quite content to sit and contemplate nothing in particular, like a cat staring at the fire.

“bring a chair and a book out, dear. these june evenings are so pleasant.”

eve followed her mother’s suggestion, knowing very well that she would not be permitted to read. mrs. carfax did not understand being silent, her conversation resembling a slowly dripping tap that lets a drop fall every few seconds. she had never troubled to read any book that did not permit her to lose her place and to pick it up again without missing anything of importance. she kept a continuous sparrowish twittering, clicking her knitting needles and sitting stiffly in her chair.

“have you had a nice day, dear?”

“quite nice.”

“did you see mr. canterton?”

“oh, yes, i saw him!”

“he must be a very interesting man.”

“yes.”

“i should think his wife is such a help to him.”

“oh?”

“looking after all the social duties, and improving his position. i don’t suppose he would have held quite the same position in the neighbourhood without her. she was a miss jerningham, wasn’t she? and, of course, that must have made a great deal of difference.”

“i suppose it did, mother.”

“of course it did, my dear. marriage makes or mars. mrs. canterton must be very popular—so energetic and public spirited, and, you see, one has to remember that mr. canterton is in trade. that has not kept them from being county people, and, of course, mrs. canterton is responsible for the social position. he must be very proud of his wife.”

“possibly. i haven’t asked him, mother. i will, if you like.”

mrs. carfax was deaf and blind to humour.

“my dear eve, i sometimes think you are a little stupid.”

“am i?”

“you don’t seem to grasp things.”

“perhaps i don’t.”