During the next two weeks Eve’s moods fluctuated between compassionate¹ altruism² and bitter and half laughing scorn. Life was so tremendous, so pathetic, so strenuous³, so absurd. For the time being she was a watcher of other people’s activities, and she spent much of her time tramping here, there and everywhere, interested in everything because of her new prejudices. She was glad to get out of the hotel, since it was full of a certain type of American tourists—tall, sallow women who talked in loud, harsh voices, chiefly about food and the digestion⁴ of food, where they had been, and what they had paid for things. The American man was a new type to Eve—a mongrel still in the making. The type puzzled and repelled⁵ her with its broad features, and curious brown eyes generally seen behind rimless⁶ glasses. Sometimes she sat and watched them and listened, and fancied she caught a note of hysterical⁷ egoism. Their laughter was not like an Englishman’s laughter. It burst out suddenly and rather fatuously⁸, betraying, despite all the jaw⁹ setting and grim hunching¹⁰ of shoulders, a lack of the deeper restraints. They were always talking, always squaring themselves up against the rest of the world, with a neurotic¹¹ self-consciousness that realised that it was still only half civilised. They suggested to Eve people who had set out to absorb culture in a single generation, and had failed most

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