"It must have been so much easier for the Elizabethans! I thought the other day on that mountain how I'd have liked to be one of those colonists, to cut down trees and make laws and all that, instead of fooling about with all these people who think one's just a pretty young lady. Though I'm not. I really might _do_ something."
She reflected in silence for a minute. Then she said:
"I'm afraid right down in my heart that Alfred Perrot _won't_ do.
He's not strong, is he?"
"Perhaps he couldn't cut down a tree," said Hewet. "Have you never cared for anybody?" he asked.
"I've cared for heaps of people, but not to marry them," she said.
"I suppose I'm too fastidious. All my life I've wanted somebody I could look up to, somebody great and big and splendid. Most men are so small."
"What d'you mean by splendid?" Hewet asked. "People are-- nothing more."
Evelyn was puzzled.
"We don't care for people because of their qualities," he tried to explain. "It's just them that we care for,"-- he struck a match--"just that," he said, pointing to the flames.
"I see what you mean," she said, "but I don't agree. I do know why I care for people, and I think I'm hardly ever wrong. I see at once what they've got in them. Now I think you must be rather splendid; but not Mr. Hirst."
Hewlet shook his head.
"He's not nearly so unselfish, or so sympathetic, or so big, or so understanding," Evelyn continued.
Hewet sat silent, smoking his cigarette.
"I should hate cutting down trees," he remarked.
"I'm not trying to flirt with you, though I suppose you think I am!"
Evelyn shot out. "I'd never have come to you if I'd thought you'd merely think odious things of me!" The tears came into her eyes.
"Do you never flirt?" he asked.
"Of course I don't," she protested. "Haven't I told you?
I want friendship; I want to care for some one greater and nobler than I am, and if they fall in love with me it isn't my fault;
I don't want it; I positively hate it."
Hewet could see that there was very little use in going on with the conversation, for it was obvious that Evelyn did not wish to say anything in particular, but to impress upon him an image of herself, being, for some reason which she would not reveal, unhappy, or insecure.
He was very tired, and a pale waiter kept walking ostentatiously into the middle of the room and looking at them meaningly.
"They want to shut up," he said. "My advice is that you should tell Oliver and Perrott to-morrow that you've made up your mind that you don't mean to marry either of them. I'm certain you don't. If you change your mind you can always tell them so. They're both sensible men; they'll understand. And then all this bother will be over."
He got up.
But Evelyn did not move. She sat looking up at him with her bright eager eyes, in the depths of which he thought he detected some disappointment, or dissatisfaction.
"Good-night," he said.
"There are heaps of things I want to say to you still," she said.
"And I'm going to, some time. I suppose you must go to bed now?"
"Yes," said Hewet. "I'm half asleep." He left her still sitting by herself in the empty hall.
"Why is it that they _won't_ be honest?" he muttered to himself as he went upstairs. Why was it that relations between different people were so unsatisfactory, so fragmentary, so hazardous, and words so dangerous that the instinct to sympathise with another human being was an instinct to be examined carefully and probably crushed?
What had Evelyn really wished to say to him? What was she feeling left alone in the empty hall? The mystery of life and the unreality even of one's own sensations overcame him as he walked down the corridor which led to his room. It was dimly lighted, but sufficiently for him to see a figure in a bright dressing-gown pass swiftly in front of him, the figure of a woman crossing from one room to another.
