With Loder, to do was to do fully.  When he gave, he gave generously; when he swept aside a barrier he left no stone standing.  He had been slow to recognize his capacities —­slower still to recognize his feelings.  But now that the knowledge came he received it openly.  In this matter of newly comprehended love he gave no thought to either past or future.  That they loved and were alone was all he knew or questioned.  She was as much Eve—­the one woman—­as though they were together in the primeval garden; and in that spirit he claimed her.

He neither spoke nor behaved extravagantly in that great moment of comprehension.  He acted quietly, with the completeness of purpose that he gave to everything.  He had found a new capacity within himself, and he was strong enough to dread no weakness in displaying it.

Holding her close to him, he repeated his declaration again and again, as though repetition ratified it.  He found no need to question her feeling for him—­he had divined it in a flash of inspiration as she stood waiting in the doorway of the gallery; but his own surrender was a different matter.

As the carriage passed round the corner of Whitehall and dipped into the traffic of Piccadilly he bent down again until her soft hair brushed his face; and the warm personal contact, the slight, fresh smell of violets so suggestive of her presence, stirred’ him afresh.

“Eve,” he said, vehemently, “do you understand?  Do you know that I have loved you always—­from the very first?” As he said it he bent still nearer, kissing her lips, her forehead, her hair.

At the same moment the horses slackened speed and then stopped, arrested by one of the temporary blocks that so often occur in the traffic of Piccadillv Circus.

Loder, preoccupied with his own feelings, scarcely noticed the halt, but Eve drew away from him laughing.

“You mustn’t!” she said, softly.  “Look!”

The carriage had stopped beside one of the small islands that intersect the place; a group of pedestrians were crowded upon it, under the light of the electric lamp—­wayfarers who, like themselves, were awaiting a passage.  Loder took a cursory glance at them, then turned back to Eve.

“What are they, after all, but men and women?” he said.  “They’d understand—­every one of them.”  He laughed in his turn; nevertheless he withdrew his arm.  Her feminine thought for conventionalities appealed to him.  It was an acknowledgment of dependency.

For a while they sat silent, the light of the street lamp flickering through the glass of the window, the hum of voices and traffic coming to them in a continuous rise and fall of sound.  At first the position was interesting; but, as the seconds followed each other, it gradually became irksome.  Loder, watching the varying expressions of Eve’s face, grew impatient of the delay, grew suddenly eager to be alone again in the fragrant darkness.