"Beautiful? I'm not sure that I see much beauty."

"Oh, don't you? I delight in London. I had dreamt of it all my life
before I came here. I always said to myself I should some day live
in London."

Her voice to-day had a vibrant quality which seemed to result from
some agreeable emotion. Hilliard remarked a gleam in her eyes and a
colour in her cheeks which gave her an appearance of better health
than a few days ago.

"You never go into the country?" he said, feeling unable to join in
her praise of London, though it was intelligible enough to him.

"I go now and then as far as Hampstead Heath," Eve answered with a
smile. "If it's fine I shall be there next Sunday with Patty
Ringrose."

Hilliard grasped the opportunity. Would she permit him to meet her
and Miss Ringrose at Hampstead? Without shadow of constraint or
affectation, Eve replied that such a meeting would give her
pleasure: she mentioned place and time at which they might
conveniently encounter.

He walked with her all the way to the library, and attended her back
to Gower Place. The result of this conversation was merely to
intensify the conflict of feelings. which Eve had excited in him.
Her friendliness gave him no genuine satisfaction; her animated
mood, in spite of the charm to which he submitted, disturbed him