When Evelyn began talking—­it was a fact she often regretted—­her thoughts came so quickly that she never had any time to listen to other people’s thoughts.  She continued without more pause than was needed for taking breath.

“I don’t see why the Saturday club people shouldn’t do a really great work 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’s to think of the human beings first and let the abstract ideas take care of 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 were trying 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 close to her, and that there was something exciting in this closeness, although it was also disagreeable.  She was spared the need of finding 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 back her chair and exclaimed, “In everything!” and began to finger different objects, the books on the table, the photographs, the freshly leaved plant with the stiff bristles, which stood in 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 things that 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 floor binding 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 crushed out of her; she knelt on a chair, gazing piteously from behind the 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 photographs in one frame.  The second photograph represented a handsome soldier with high regular features and a heavy black moustache; his hand rested on the hilt of his sword; there was a decided likeness between him and Evelyn.