There was no use, of course. Yet he had a feeling that he was being robbed of something sweet and sacred. The quaint old service asked things of men as well as of women. Good and loving and fine things. He was old-fashioned enough to want to promise all that it asked, and to have his wife promise.
Eve laughed, too, at Richard's grace before meat. "You mustn't embarrass me at formal dinners, Dicky. Somehow it won't seem quite in keeping with the cocktails, will it?"
Thus the spirit of Eve, contending with all that made him the son of his mother, meeting his spiritual revolts with material arguments, banking the fires of his flaming aspirations!
Yet he rarely let himself dwell upon this aspect of it. He had set his feet in a certain path, and he was prepared to follow it.
On this path, at every turning, he met Philip. The big man had not been driven from the field by the fact of Eve's engagement. He still asked her to go with him, he still planned pleasures for her. His money made things easy, and while he included Richard in most of his plans, he looked upon him as a necessary evil. Eve refused to go without her young doctor.
Now and then, however, he had her alone. "Dicky's called to an appendicitis case," she informed him ruefully, one night over the telephone, "and I am dead lonesome. Come and cheer me up."
He went to her, and during the evening proposed a week-end yachting trip which should take them to the North Shore and Aunt Maude.
"Of course. But I'm not sure that I want him."
"He wouldn't come if he knew that you felt like that."
"It isn't anything personal. And you know my manner is perfect when I'm with him."
"Yes. Poor Dicky. Pip, we are a pair of deceivers. I sometimes think I ought to tell him."
"Nothing tangible,--but he's so straightforward. And he'd hate the idea that I'm letting you--make love to me."
"I don't make love. I have never touched the tip of your finger."
"_Pip!_ Of course not. But your eyes make love, and your manner--and deep down in my heart I am afraid."
"That Fate isn't going to give me what I want. I don't want you, Pip. I want Dicky. And if you loved me--you'd let me alone."
She weakened. "But I don't want you to go away. You see, you are my good friend, Pip."