But Hewet need not have increased his torments by imagining thatHirst was still talking to Rachel. The party very soon broke up,the Flushings going in one direction, Hirst in another, and Rachelremaining in the hall, pulling the illustrated papers about,turning from one to another, her movements expressing the unformedrestless desire in her mind. She did not know whether to go orto stay, though Mrs. Flushing had commanded her to appear at tea.

　　The hall was empty, save for Miss Willett who was playing scales withher fingers upon a sheet of sacred music, and the Carters, an opulentcouple who disliked the girl, because her shoe laces were untied,and she did not look sufficiently cheery, which by some indirectprocess of thought led them to think that she would not like them.

　　Rachel certainly would not have liked them, if she had seen them,for the excellent reason that Mr. Carter waxed his moustache,and Mrs. Carter wore bracelets, and they were evidently the kindof people who would not like her; but she was too much absorbedby her own restlessness to think or to look.

　　She was turning over the slippery pages of an American magazine,when the hall door swung, a wedge of light fell upon the floor,and a small white figure upon whom the light seemed focussed,made straight across the room to her.

　　"What! You here?" Evelyn exclaimed. "Just caught a glimpseof you at lunch; but you wouldn't condescend to look at _me_."It was part of Evelyn's character that in spite of many snubswhich she received or imagined, she never gave up the pursuitof people she wanted to know, and in the long run generallysucceeded in knowing them and even in making them like her.

　　She looked round her. "I hate this place. I hate these people,"she said. "I wish you'd come up to my room with me. I do want totalk to you."As Rachel had no wish to go or to stay, Evelyn took her by the wristand drew her out of the hall and up the stairs. As they went upstairstwo steps at a time, Evelyn, who still kept hold of Rachel's hand,ejaculated broken sentences about not caring a hang what people said.

　　"Why should one, if one knows one's right? And let 'em all goto blazes! Them's my opinions!"She was in a state of great excitement, and the muscles of her armswere twitching nervously. It was evident that she was only waitingfor the door to shut to tell Rachel all about it. Indeed, directly theywere inside her room, she sat on the end of the bed and said,"I suppose you think I'm mad?"Rachel was not in the mood to think clearly about any one's stateof mind. She was however in the mood to say straight out whateveroccurred to her without fear of the consequences.

　　"Somebody's proposed to you," she remarked.

　　"How on earth did you guess that?" Evelyn exclaimed, some pleasuremingling with her surprise. "Do as I look as if I'd just hada proposal?""You look as if you had them every day," Rachel replied.

　　"But I don't suppose I've had more than you've had," Evelyn laughedrather insincerely.

　　"I've never had one.""But you will--lots--it's the easiest thing in the world--But that'snot what's happened this afternoon exactly. It's--Oh, it's a muddle,a detestable, horrible, disgusting muddle!"She went to the wash-stand and began sponging her cheeks with cold water;for they were burning hot. Still sponging them and trembling slightly sheturned and explained in the high pitched voice of nervous excitement:

　　"Alfred Perrott says I've promised to marry him, and I say I never did.

　　Sinclair says he'll shoot himself if I don't marry him, and I say,'Well, shoot yourself!' But of course he doesn't--they never do.

　　And Sinclair got hold of me this afternoon and began bothering meto give an answer, and accusing me of flirting with Alfred Perrott,and told me I'd no heart, and was merely a Siren, oh, and quantitiesof pleasant things like that. So at last I said to him,'Well, Sinclair, you've said enough now. You can just let me go.'

　　And then he caught me and kissed me--the disgusting brute--I canstill feel his nasty hairy face just there--as if he'd any right to,after what he'd said!"She sponged a spot on her left cheek energetically.

　　"I've never met a man that was fit to compare with a woman!"she cried; "they've no dignity, they've no courage, they've nothingbut their beastly passions and their brute strength! Would anywoman have behaved like that--if a man had said he didn't want her?

　　We've too much self-respect; we're infinitely finer than they are."She walked about the room, dabbing her wet cheeks with a towel.

　　Tears were now running down with the drops of cold water.

　　"It makes me angry," she explained, drying her eyes.

　　Rachel sat watching her. She did not think of Evelyn's position;she only thought that the world was full or people in torment.

　　"There's only one man here I really like," Evelyn continued;"Terence Hewet. One feels as if one could trust him."At these words Rachel suffered an indescribable chill; her heartseemed to be pressed together by cold hands.

　　"Why?" she asked. "Why can you trust him?""I don't know," said Evelyn. "Don't you have feelings about people?

　　Feelings you're absolutely certain are right? I had a long talk withTerence the other night. I felt we were really friends after that.

　　There's something of a woman in him--" She paused as though shewere thinking of very intimate things that Terence had told her,so at least Rachel interpreted her gaze.

　　She tried to force herself to say, "Has to be proposed to you?"but the question was too tremendous, and in another moment Evelynwas saying that the finest men were like women, and women were noblerthan men--for example, one couldn't imagine a woman like LillahHarrison thinking a mean thing or having anything base about her.

　　"How I'd like you to know her!" she exclaimed.

　　She was becoming much calmer, and her cheeks were now quite dry.

　　Her eyes had regained their usual expression of keen vitality,and she seemed to have forgotten Alfred and Sinclair and her emotion.

　　"Lillah runs a home for inebriate women in the Deptford Road,"she continued. "She started it, managed it, did everything offher own bat, and it's now the biggest of its kind in England.

　　You can't think what those women are like--and their homes.

　　But she goes among them at all hours of the day and night.

　　I've often been with her. . . . That's what's the matter with us.

　　. . . We don't _do_ things. What do you _do_?" she demanded,looking at Rachel with a slightly ironical smile. Rachel had scarcelylistened to any of this, and her expression was vacant and unhappy.

　　She had conceived an equal dislike for Lillah Harrison and her workin the Deptford Road, and for Evelyn M. and her profusion of loveaffairs.

　　"I play," she said with an affection of stolid composure.

　　"That's about it!" Evelyn laughed. "We none of us do anythingbut play. And that's why women like Lillah Harrison, who's worthtwenty of you and me, have to work themselves to the bone.

　　But I'm tired of playing," she went on, lying flat on the bed,and raising her arms above her head. Thus stretched out, she lookedmore diminutive than ever.

　　"I'm going to do something. I've got a splendid idea. Look here,you must join. I'm sure you've got any amount of stuff in you,though you look--well, as if you'd lived all your life in a garden."She sat up, and began to explain with animation. "I belong to a clubin London. It meets every Saturday, so it's called the Saturday Club.

　　We're supposed to talk about art, but I'm sick of talking about art--what's the good of it? With all kinds of real things going on round one?

　　It isn't as if they'd got anything to say about art, either.

　　So what I'm going to tell 'em is that we've talked enough about art,and we'd better talk about life for a change. Questions that reallymatter to people's lives, the White Slave Traffic, Women Suffrage,the Insurance Bill, and so on. And when we've made up our mind whatwe want to do we could form ourselves into a society for doing it.

　　. . . I'm certain that if people like ourselves were to takethings in hand instead of leaving it to policemen and magistrates,we could put a stop to--prostitution"--she lowered her voiceat the ugly word--"in six months. My idea is that men and womenought to join in these matters. We ought to go into Piccadillyand stop one of these poor wretches and say: 'Now, look here,I'm no better than you are, and I don't pretend to be any better,but you're doing what you know to be beastly, and I won't haveyou doing beastly things, because we're all the same underour skins, and if you do a beastly thing it does matter to me.'

　　That's what Mr. Bax was saying this morning, and it's true,though you clever people--you're clever too, aren't you?--don't believe it."When Evelyn began talking--it was a fact she often regretted--her thoughts came so quickly that she never had any time to listento other people's thoughts. She continued without more pause thanwas needed for taking breath.

　　"I don't see why the Saturday club people shouldn't do a really greatwork in that way," she went on. "Of course it would want organisation,some one to give their life to it, but I'm ready to do that. My notion'sto think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take careof themselves. What's wrong with Lillah--if there is anything wrong--is that she thinks of Temperance first and the women afterwards.

　　Now there's one thing I'll say to my credit," she continued;"I'm not intellectual or artistic or anything of that sort,but I'm jolly human." She slipped off the bed and sat on the floor,looking up at Rachel. She searched up into her face as if she weretrying to read what kind of character was concealed behind the face.

　　She put her hand on Rachel's knee.

　　"It _is_ being human that counts, isn't it?" she continued.

　　"Being real, whatever Mr. Hirst may say. Are you real?"Rachel felt much as Terence had felt that Evelyn was too closeto her, and that there was something exciting in this closeness,although it was also disagreeable. She was spared the need offinding an answer to the question, for Evelyn proceeded, "Do you_believe_ in anything?"In order to put an end to the scrutiny of these bright blue eyes,and to relieve her own physical restlessness, Rachel pushed backher chair and exclaimed, "In everything!" and began to fingerdifferent objects, the books on the table, the photographs,the freshly leaved plant with the stiff bristles, which stoodin a large earthenware pot in the window.

　　"I believe in the bed, in the photographs, in the pot, in the balcony,in the sun, in Mrs. Flushing," she remarked, still speaking recklessly,with something at the back of her mind forcing her to say the thingsthat one usually does not say. "But I don't believe in God,I don't believe in Mr. Bax, I don't believe in the hospital nurse.

　　I don't believe--" She took up a photograph and, looking at it,did not finish her sentence.

　　"That's my mother," said Evelyn, who remained sitting on the floorbinding her knees together with her arms, and watching Rachel curiously.

　　Rachel considered the portrait. "Well, I don't much believe in her,"she remarked after a time in a low tone of voice.

　　Mrs. Murgatroyd looked indeed as if the life had been crushedout of her; she knelt on a chair, gazing piteously from behindthe body of a Pomeranian dog which she clasped to her cheek,as if for protection.

　　"And that's my dad," said Evelyn, for there were two photographsin one frame. The second photograph represented a handsomesoldier with high regular features and a heavy black moustache;his hand rested on the hilt of his sword; there was a decidedlikeness between him and Evelyn.

　　"And it's because of them," said Evelyn, "that I'm goingto help the other women. You've heard about me, I suppose?

　　They weren't married, you see; I'm not anybody in particular.

　　I'm not a bit ashamed of it. They loved each other anyhow,and that's more than most people can say of their parents."Rachel sat down on the bed, with the two pictures in her hands,and compared them--the man and the woman who had, so Evelyn said,loved each other. That fact interested her more than the campaignon behalf of unfortunate women which Evelyn was once more beginningto describe. She looked again from one to the other.

　　"What d'you think it's like," she asked, as Evelyn paused for a minute,"being in love?""Have you never been in love?" Evelyn asked. "Oh no--one's onlygot to look at you to see that," she added. She considered.

　　"I really was in love once," she said. She fell into reflection,her eyes losing their bright vitality and approaching something likean expression of tenderness. "It was heavenly!--while it lasted.

　　The worst of it is it don't last, not with me. That's the bother."She went on to consider the difficulty with Alfred and Sinclairabout which she had pretended to ask Rachel's advice. But she didnot want advice; she wanted intimacy. When she looked at Rachel,who was still looking at the photographs on the bed, she could nothelp seeing that Rachel was not thinking about her. What was shethinking about, then? Evelyn was tormented by the little spark oflife in her which was always trying to work through to other people,and was always being rebuffed. Falling silent she looked ather visitor, her shoes, her stockings, the combs in her hair,all the details of her dress in short, as though by seizing everydetail she might get closer to the life within.

　　Rachel at last put down the photographs, walked to the windowand remarked, "It's odd. People talk as much about love as theydo about religion.""I wish you'd sit down and talk," said Evelyn impatiently.

　　Instead Rachel opened the window, which was made in two long panes,and looked down into the garden below.

　　"That's where we got lost the first night," she said. "It musthave been in those bushes.""They kill hens down there," said Evelyn. "They cut their headsoff with a knife--disgusting! But tell me--what--""I'd like to explore the hotel," Rachel interrupted. She drewher head in and looked at Evelyn, who still sat on the floor.

　　"It's just like other hotels," said Evelyn.

　　That might be, although every room and passage and chairin the place had a character of its own in Rachel's eyes;but she could not bring herself to stay in one place any longer.

　　She moved slowly towards the door.

　　"What is it you want?" said Evelyn. "You make me feel as if youwere always thinking of something you don't say. . . . Do say it!"But Rachel made no response to this invitation either. She stoppedwith her fingers on the handle of the door, as if she rememberedthat some sort of pronouncement was due from her.

　　"I suppose you'll marry one of them," she said, and then turnedthe handle and shut the door behind her. She walked slowlydown the passage, running her hand along the wall beside her.

　　She did not think which way she was going, and therefore walkeddown a passage which only led to a window and a balcony. She lookeddown at the kitchen premises, the wrong side of the hotel life,which was cut off from the right side by a maze of small bushes.

　　The ground was bare, old tins were scattered about, and the busheswore towels and aprons upon their heads to dry. Every now and thena waiter came out in a white apron and threw rubbish on to a heap.

　　Two large women in cotton dresses were sitting on a bench withblood-smeared tin trays in front of them and yellow bodies acrosstheir knees. They were plucking the birds, and talking as they plucked.

　　Suddenly a chicken came floundering, half flying, half runninginto the space, pursued by a third woman whose age could hardly beunder eighty. Although wizened and unsteady on her legs she keptup the chase, egged on by the laughter of the others; her face wasexpressive of furious rage, and as she ran she swore in Spanish.

　　Frightened by hand-clapping here, a napkin there, the bird ranthis way and that in sharp angles, and finally fluttered straightat the old woman, who opened her scanty grey skirts to enclose it,dropped upon it in a bundle, and then holding it out cut its headoff with an expression of vindictive energy and triumph combined.

　　The blood and the ugly wriggling fascinated Rachel, so that althoughshe knew that some one had come up behind and was standing beside her,she did not turn round until the old woman had settled down onthe bench beside the others. Then she looked up sharply, because ofthe ugliness of what she had seen. It was Miss Allan who stoodbeside her.

　　"Not a pretty sight," said Miss Allan, "although I daresay it'sreally more humane than our method. . . . I don't believe you'veever been in my room," she added, and turned away as if she meantRachel to follow her. Rachel followed, for it seemed possiblethat each new person might remove the mystery which burdened her.

　　The bedrooms at the hotel were all on the same pattern, save that somewere larger and some smaller; they had a floor of dark red tiles;they had a high bed, draped in mosquito curtains; they had eacha writing-table and a dressing-table, and a couple of arm-chairs.

　　But directly a box was unpacked the rooms became very different,so that Miss Allan's room was very unlike Evelyn's room.

　　There were no variously coloured hatpins on her dressing-table;no scent-bottles; no narrow curved pairs of scissors; no great varietyof shoes and boots; no silk petticoats lying on the chairs. The roomwas extremely neat. There seemed to be two pairs of everything.

　　The writing-table, however, was piled with manuscript, and a tablewas drawn out to stand by the arm-chair on which were two separateheaps of dark library books, in which there were many slips of papersticking out at different degrees of thickness. Miss Allan had askedRachel to come in out of kindness, thinking that she was waitingabout with nothing to do. Moreover, she liked young women, for shehad taught many of them, and having received so much hospitality fromthe Ambroses she was glad to be able to repay a minute part of it.

　　She looked about accordingly for something to show her. The roomdid not provide much entertainment. She touched her manuscript.

　　"Age of Chaucer; Age of Elizabeth; Age of Dryden," she reflected;"I'm glad there aren't many more ages. I'm still in the middle ofthe eighteenth century. Won't you sit down, Miss Vinrace? The chair,though small, is firm. . . . Euphues. The germ of the English novel,"she continued, glancing at another page. "Is that the kind of thingthat interests you?"She looked at Rachel with great kindness and simplicity, as thoughshe would do her utmost to provide anything she wished to have.

　　This expression had a remarkable charm in a face otherwise much linedwith care and thought.

　　"Oh no, it's music with you, isn't it?" she continued,recollecting, "and I generally find that they don't go together.

　　Sometimes of course we have prodigies--" She was looking about herfor something and now saw a jar on the mantelpiece which she reacheddown and gave to Rachel. "If you put your finger into this jaryou may be able to extract a piece of preserved ginger. Are you a prodigy?"But the ginger was deep and could not be reached.

　　"Don't bother," she said, as Miss Allan looked about for someother implement. "I daresay I shouldn't like preserved ginger.""You've never tried?" enquired Miss Allan. "Then I consider that itis your duty to try now. Why, you may add a new pleasure to life,and as you are still young--" She wondered whether a button-hookwould do. "I make it a rule to try everything," she said. "Don't youthink it would be very annoying if you tasted ginger for the firsttime on your death-bed, and found you never liked anything so much?

　　I should be so exceedingly annoyed that I think I should get wellon that account alone."She was now successful, and a lump of ginger emerged on the endof the button-hook. While she went to wipe the button-hook, Rachelbit the ginger and at once cried, "I must spit it out!""Are you sure you have really tasted it?" Miss Allan demanded.

　　For answer Rachel threw it out of the window.

　　"An experience anyhow," said Miss Allan calmly. "Let me see--I havenothing else to offer you, unless you would like to taste this."A small cupboard hung above her bed, and she............