Eveline Hutchins–Don Stevens relationship

Eveline Hutchins and Don Stevens have a relationship shaped by attraction without a settled commitment: they turn to one another at vulnerable moments, but political fervor, jealousy, and Eveline’s changing attachments keep intimacy uncertain. Their encounters move from a public kiss in a Paris household to Don’s secret return in 1919, when his practical care briefly revives a closeness neither can sustain.

Reunion and an Uncertain Attachment

When Don returns to Paris on leave in his Quaker-service uniform, Eveline has been alone for months. Jerry Burnham is away, Raoul Lemonnier has stopped visiting, and the attentions of Major Appleton weary her. Don’s arrival feels like a deliverance from this isolation; Eveline decides she may have been in love with him after all. She tells Yvonne that Don is her cousin, raised with her like a brother, and puts him in Eleanor Stoddard’s room. The improvised cover story makes his welcome possible, while the claim of sibling-like familiarity sits beside Eveline’s newly acknowledged desire.

Don comes back animated by the Bolshevik success in Russia and by his belief that mutiny and revolution may spread through the armies. His reports of soldiers turning against the war lead into a larger hope for a socialist civilization. At dinner he leans across the table and kisses Eveline, directly in front of Yvonne, who is carrying pancakes with burning brandy. The gesture makes their attraction visible even as Don’s political expectations dominate the conversation. His teasing address to Yvonne about life after the war almost makes her smile, leaving the kiss embedded in a scene of revolutionary confidence and domestic awkwardness.

Jealousy and the Refused Night

Later, while Don is again on leave, Eveline dines with J. Ward Moorehouse and brings him back to her apartment after a noisy restaurant proves uncomfortable. Don happens to see them as he walks by with Paul Johnson, a young private. Eveline briefly hopes he will not notice; instead, he turns back and joins them. The three sit awkwardly in the parlor, with Eveline and J. Ward Moorehouse talking mostly about Eleanor Stoddard. When J. Ward Moorehouse leaves, Don breaks out in anger at the Red Cross major. Eveline answers that being a fake Quaker is no better, turning his own position in the uniformed Quaker outfit into the sting of her reply.

Paul Johnson’s deferential manner initially irritates Eveline, but she likes him by the time he leaves and defends him when Don dismisses him as overly sentimental. Don had apparently expected to spend the night with her; Eveline refuses, and he goes away looking sullen. The episode makes their difference plain: Don acts as if their attraction grants him an intimacy Eveline has not agreed to, while she can feel tenderness toward him and still draw a boundary. His jealousy of J. Ward Moorehouse does not translate into an assurance or a stable claim on her.

Desire Amid the War

The contrast between them is also political. Don speaks of approaching upheaval with intense hope, imagining the war’s destruction as potentially worthwhile if it produces a new social order. Eveline is receptive to his presence and his excitement, but the surrounding months bring rumors, military uncertainty, and repeated preparations at the Red Cross office to evacuate Paris. Their closeness therefore takes place within a world where Don’s revolutionary forecast seems possible for a time, yet neither his convictions nor their attraction resolves Eveline’s personal uncertainty.

The Paris scenes place Don’s intimacy beside Eveline’s other relationships rather than apart from them. Her decision to dine with J. Ward Moorehouse, her discomfort when Don appears, and her refusal to let Don stay show that she is not simply returning to an established couple’s life. She is drawn to Don, but she remains capable of turning him away. Conversely, Don’s angry response to seeing her with another man and his expectation of the night reveal a desire for closeness that he does not make secure through a mutual understanding.

The Secret Return and Another Parting

At the end of April 1919, Don reappears in Paris in civilian clothes after resigning from the reconstruction unit. Broke, he asks Eveline for a place to stay. She worries what the concierge, Eleanor Stoddard, or J. Ward Moorehouse might think, but bitterness and desperation leave her unwilling to protect appearances. She agrees on condition that Don keep her address secret. He teases her for bourgeois concern about discovery and urges her to read L’Humanité; he also takes her to the restaurant associated with the assassination of Jaurès. Their renewed companionship thus brings political urgency back into the relationship, now in the tense lead-up to May Day.

After Eveline catches a cold during a gloomy trip to Chartres with Freddy Seargeant, Don tends to her: he tucks her into bed and makes hot lemonade with cognac. He has earned money from articles and found work in Vienna for the Daily Herald of London, and expects to leave soon after May 1 unless events intervene. When he leaves for a hotel that evening, he thanks her for taking him in as a good comrade, while acknowledging that she no longer loves him. His departure leaves the place feeling empty; feverish, sick, and lonely, Eveline almost wishes she had asked him to stay. The episode closes not with reconciliation but with a small reversal: she had taken him in under strict conditions, yet his absence makes the intimacy she had resisted newly painful.

Pattern and Significance

Across these encounters, their relationship repeatedly approaches a threshold without crossing into lasting commitment. Eveline welcomes Don when loneliness makes his presence a relief, responds to his kiss, and later shelters and cares for him; she also refuses his expectation of a night together and initially conceals him from the people around her. Don offers political confidence, bodily affection, and companionship, but his jealousy and departures do not provide the security Eveline’s changing circumstances would require. Their attachment is therefore registered through concrete acts—a cover story, a kiss before Yvonne, a sullen exit, a secret bed, a hot drink, and an empty room—rather than a durable promise. In a narrative crowded by war and political upheaval, their private connection remains provisional: closeness repeatedly returns, but neither the revolution Don anticipates nor their attraction supplies a settled ending.