Chapter 21

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_ CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

On account of the numerous rehearsals demanded by Evelyn for the production of "Tristan and Isolde," Mr. Hermann Goetze's opera season was limited to four nights a week. But the hours she spent in the theatre were only a small part of the time she devoted to her idea. Her entire life was lived in or about the new incarnation, her whole life seemed to converge and rush into an ultimate channel, and Lady Ascott sought her in vain. She avoided social distractions, and the friends she saw were those who could talk to her about her idea. But while listening she forgot them, and absorbed in her dream strayed round the piano. She meditated journeys to Cornwall and Brittany; and one day when Owen called he heard that she had gone to Ireland, and was expected back to-morrow evening. She read Isolde into the morning paper, receiving hints from the cases that came up before the magistrates. She found Isolde in every book, all that happened seemed extraordinarily fortuitous, the light of her idea revealing significance in the most ordinary things. Her life was ransacked like an old work-box, all kinds of stages of mentality, opinions, beliefs, prejudices, trite and conventional enough, came up and were thrown aside. But now and then the memory of an emotion, of a feeling, would prove to be just what she wanted to add a moment's life to her Isolde; the memory of a gesture, of a look was sufficient, and she sank back in her chair, her eyes dilated and moody, thinking how she could work this truth to herself into the harmony of the picture she was elaborating.

Evelyn had seen Rosa Sucher play the part, and had admired her rendering as far as we can admire that which is not only antagonistic, but even discordant to our own natures. She admitted it to be very sweeping, triumphant and loud, a fine braying of trumpets from the rise to the fall of the curtain. Rosa Sucher had no doubt attained an extraordinary oneness of idea, but at what price? Her Isolde was a hurricane, a sort of avalanche; and the woman was lost in the storm. She had missed the magic of the woman who, personal to our flesh and dream, breaks upon our life like the Spring; and this was just what Evelyn wanted to out on the stage. There was plenty of breadth, but it was breadth at the price of accent. There was a great frame and a sort of design within the frame, but in Evelyn's sense the picture was wanting. There was an extraordinary and incomprehensible neglect of that personal accent without which there is no life. And the difference between the Isolde who has not drunk, and the Isolde who has drunk the love potion which she, Evelyn, was so intent upon indicating, had never occurred to Rosa Sucher, or if it had, it had been swept aside as a negligible detail. After all, Isolde has to be a woman a man could be in love with, and that is not the impact and the shriek of a gale from the south-west. No doubt Rosa Sucher's idea of the part was Wagner's idea at one moment of his life. Wagner was a man with hundreds of ideas; he tried them all, retaining some and discarding others. Some half-dozen have fixed themselves immutably in certain minds, and an undue importance is given to them, an importance that Wagner would never have allowed. The absurd idea, propounded in the heat of controversy, that all the arts were to wax to one art in the music drama, that even sculpture was to be represented by attitudes of the actors and actresses! Wagner had written this thing in order to confound his enemies and bring the weak-kneed to his side, or maybe, it was merely written to make himself clear to himself. For it was impossible that a man of genius should be so seriously wanting in appreciation of sculpture as to think with the centre of his brain, that an actor standing, his hand on his hip, could fill the place hitherto occupied in the mind by, let us say, the Hermes of Praxiteles. Yet this idea still obtained at Bayreuth, and Rosa Sucher walked about, her arms raised and posed above her head, in the conventional, statuesque attitude designed for the decoration of beer gardens.

"It really is very sad," Evelyn said, her eyes twinkling with the humour of the idea, "that anyone should think that such figuration could replace sculpture."

"But you will not deny that the actor and the actress can supply part of the picturesqueness of a dramatic action."

"No, indeed; but not by attitudinising, but by gestures that tell the emotion that is in the mind."

By some obscure route of which they were not aware, these artistic discussions wound around the idea which dominated their minds, and they were led back to it continually. The story of "Tristan and Isolde" seemed to be their own story, and when their eyes met, each divined what was passing in the other's mind. The music was afloat on the currents of their blood. It gathered in the brain, paralysing it, and the nervous exhaustion was unbearable about six, when the servant had taken away the tea things; and as the afternoon drooped and the beauty of the summer evening began in the park, speech seemed vain, and they could not bring themselves to argue any longer.

It was quite true that she had begun to feel the blankness of the positivist creed, if it were possible to call it a creed. There seemed nothing left of it, it seemed to have shrivelled up like a little withered leaf; true or false, it meant nothing to her, it crushed up like a dried leaf, and the dust escaped through her fingers. Then without any particular reason she remembered a phrase she had heard in the theatre.

"As I always says, if one man isn't enough for a woman, twenty aren't too many."

The homeliness of this speech seemed to accentuate the moral truth, and making application of it to herself, she felt that if she were to take another lover she would not stop at twenty. Her face contracted in an expression of disgust at this glimpse of her inner nature which had been flashed upon her; and looking into herself she could discover nothing but a talent for singing and acting. If she had not had her voice, God only knows what she would have been, and she turned her eyes from a vision of gradual decadence. If she were not to sink to the lowest, she must hold to her love of Owen, and not yield to her love of Ulick. This low nature which she could distinguish in herself she must conquer, or it would conquer her. "If one man isn't enough for a woman, twenty are not too many." The humble working woman who had uttered these words was right.... If she were to give way she would have twenty and would end by throwing herself over one of the bridges.

She felt that she must marry Owen, and under this conclusion she stopped like one who has come face to face with a blank wall. But did she love him well enough to marry him? She loved him, but was her present love as intense as the love that had obsessed her whole nature in Paris six years ago? She tried to think that it was, and found casual consolation in the thought that if she were not so mad about him now as she was then, her love was deeper; it had become a part of herself, and was founded on such knowledge of his character that nothing could change or alter it. She knew now that in spite of all his faults she could trust him, and that was something; she knew that his love for her was enduring, that it was not a mere passing passion, as it easily might have been. He had given her fame, wealth, position--everything a woman could desire. Some might blame him for having taken her away from her home, but she did not blame him, for she knew that she could not have remained with her father at that time. If she had not gone away with Owen she might have killed herself; something had given way within her, she had to do what she had done.

But did she love Owen, or was she getting tired of him? It was so easy to ask and so difficult to answer these questions. However closely we look into our souls, some part of the truth escapes us. One always slurred something or exaggerated something.... She remembered that Owen had been very tiresome lately; his egoism was ceaseless; it got upon her nerves, and she felt that, no matter what happened to her, she could not endure it. There were his songs! How tired she was of talking about his songs, the long considerations whether this chord or the other chord, this modulation or another, were the better. He could not compose a dozen bars without having them engraved and sending copies to his friends. He wished the whole world to be occupied about him and his affairs. He was so childish about his music. Other people said, "Oh, yes, very pretty," but she had to sing it. If she refused, it meant unpleasantness, and though he did not often say so, a charge of ingratitude, for, of course, without him she wouldn't have been able to sing at all. The worst of it was that he did not see the ridiculous side.

When singing some of his songs, she had caught a look in people's eyes, a pitying look, and she could not help wondering if they thought that she liked such commonplace, or worse still, if they thought that she was obliged to sing it. But when she had remembered all he had done for her, it seemed quite a disgrace that she should hate to sing his songs. It was the one thing she could do to please him, and she reflected on her selfishness. She seemed to have no moral qualities; the idea she had expressed to Ulick regarding the necessity of chastity in women returned, and she felt sure that in women at least every other virtue is dependent on that virtue. But when Owen was ill she had travelled hundreds of miles to nurse him; she had not hesitated a moment, and she might have caught the fever. She wouldn't have done that if she did not love him.... She was always thinking how she could help him, she would do anything for him. But he was such a strange man. There were times when there was no one kinder, gentler, more affectionate, but at other times he turned round and snapped like a mad dog. The desire to be rude took him at times like a disease; this was his most obvious fault. But his worst fault, at least in her eyes, was his love of parade; his determination to appear to the world in the aspect which he thought was his by birth and position. Notwithstanding a seeming absence of affection and candour, he was always acting a part. True that he played the part very well; and his snobbery was never vulgar.

Thinking of him profoundly, looking into his nature with the clear sight of six years of life with him, she decided that the essential fault was an inability to forego the temptation of the moment. For him the temptation of the moment was the greatest of all. He was the essential child, and had carried all the child's passionate egoism into his middle age. One gave way because everything seemed to mean so much more to him that it could to oneself. He could not be deprived of his toy; his toy came before everything. But why did he make himself offensive to many people by speaking against Christianity? It was so illogical to love art as he did and to hate religion.... He had listened much more indulgently to Ulick than she had expected, and seemed to perceive the picturesqueness of the gods, Angus and Lir. It was Christianity that irritated and changed him to the cynic he was not, and forced him into arguments which she hated: "that when you went to the root of things, no one ever acted except from a selfish motive" and his aphorism, "I don't believe in temptations that one doesn't yield to." Her thoughts went back over years, to the very day he had said the words to her for the first time.... It was true in a way, but it was not the whole truth. But to him it was the whole truth, that was the unfortunate part of it, and his life was a complete exemplification of this theory, and the result was one of the unhappiest men on the face of the earth. He would tell you he had the finest place in the world, and the finest pictures in the world, yet these things did not save him from unhappiness. He could not understand that happiness is attained through renunciation. He had never renounced anything, and so his life was a mere triviality. The clearness of her vision surprised her; she paused a moment and then continued. He must always be amused, he could not bear to be alone. Distraction, distraction, distraction was his one cry. She had to combat the spectre of boredom and save the man from himself. Hitherto she had done this, it had been her pleasure, but if she married him it would become her mission, her duty, her life. Could she undertake it? Her heart sank. He had worn her out, she could do no more. She grew frightened, life seemed too much for her; and then she bit her lips, and vowed that whatever it cost her she would marry him if he wished her to.... If she did not mean to take the consequences, she ought not to have gone away with him. To be Owen's wife was perchance her mission.

It had always been arranged that they were to be married when she left the stage. But he wished her to remain on the stage till she had played Kundry; but if she were going to leave the stage she did not care to delay, nor did she care for the part of Kundry. The meaning of the part escaped her.... So the time had come for her to offer herself to Owen. Whatever his desires might be, his honour would force him to say Yes. So there was no escape. Fate had decreed it so, she was to be his wife; but one thing she need not endure, and that was unnecessary suspense. She had decided to go to Lady Ascott's ball.... But she wouldn't see him there. He was kept indoors by the gout. He had written asking her to come and pass the evening with him.... She might call to see him on her way to the ball; yes, that is what she would do, and she sat down at once and wrote a note.

And she laughed and talked during dinner, and was surprised when Lady Duckle remarked how pale and ill she was looking, for she thought she was making a fine outward show of high spirits. She and Lady Duckle were dining alone, and she tried to devise a plan for going to Berkeley Square without taking Lady Duckle into her confidence. The horrible scene with Owen flitted before her eyes while talking of other things. And so the evening dragged itself out in the drawing-room.

"Olive, I want to make a call before going to Lady Ascott's; I will send the carriage back for you."

"But we need not get there until a quarter to one. There will be plenty of time."

"Very well," Evelyn answered, as unconcernedly as she could. "I'll be here a little after twelve."

In the carriage she remembered that she was going to the same house to tell him that she would be his wife as she had gone to tell him she would be his mistress.

"Sir Owen has been very bad to-day, miss," the butler said in a confidential undertone. "It has taken him again in his right toe;" and he leaned forward to open the door of Owen's private sitting-room.

She passed in, the door closed softly behind her, and she saw her lover lying in a large, chintz-covered arm-chair, full of cushions, deep like a feather bed. He held his book high, so that all the light of the electric lamp fell upon it, and the small, wrinkled face seemed to have suddenly grown older behind the spectacles, and the appearance at that moment was of a man just slipping over the years that divides middle from old age.

In the single second that elapsed before they spoke, Evelyn felt and understood a great deal. Never had Owen seemed so like himself; the old age which so visibly had laid its wrinkles and infirmities upon him was clearly his old age, and the old age of his fathers before him. He was in his own old room, planned and ordered by himself. Even his arm-chair seemed characteristic of him. With whatever hardships he might put up in the hunting field or the deer forest, he believed in the deepest arm-chair that upholstery could stuff when he came home. In this room were his personal pictures, those he had bought himself. They, of course, included a beautiful woman by Gainsborough, and a pellucid evening sky, with a group of pensive trees, by Corot. There were beautiful painted tables and chairs, and marble and ormolu clocks, the refined and gracious designs of the best periods; and the sight of Owen sitting amid all these attempts to capture happiness, revealed to her the moral idea of which this man was but a symbol; and the thought that life without a moral purpose is but a passing spectre, and that our immortality lies in our religious life, occurred to her again. His first remark, too, about his gout, that it wasn't much, but just enough to make life a curse--could she tell him what end was served by torturing us in this way?--laid, as it were, an accent upon the thoughts of him that were passing in her mind.

It was that crouching attitude in the arm-chair that had made him seem so old. Now that he had taken off his spectacles, and was standing up, he did not look older than his age. He wore a silk shirt and a black velvet smoking suit, and had kept his figure--it still went in at the waist. She admired him for a moment and then pitied him, for he limped painfully and pulled over one of his own chairs for her. But she declined it, choosing a less comfortable one, feeling that she must sit straight up if she were to moralise. She had imagined that the subject would introduce itself in the course of conversation, and that it would develop imperceptibly. She had imagined that they would speak of the first performance of "Tristan and Isolde," now distant but a couple of days, or of Lady Ascott's ball, at which she had promised to appear. But Owen had spoken of a song which he had re-written that afternoon, not having anything else to do. He believed he had immensely improved it, and wished that she would try it over. To sing one of his songs, to decipher manuscript, was the last thing she felt she could do, and the proposal irritated her. Her whole life was at stake; it had cost her a great deal to come to the decision that she must either marry him or send him away. Partly on purpose, and partly because she could not help it, her face assumed a calm and fixed expression which he knew well.

"Evelyn, you're going to say something disagreeable. Don't, I've had enough to worry me lately; there's my mother's health, and this, miserable attack of gout."

"I hope you won't think what I've come to say disagreeable, but one never knows." He waited anxiously, and after some pause she said, though it seemed to her that she had come to the point much too abruptly, "Owen, was it not arranged that we should marry when I left the stage?" She had not been able to lend herself to the diplomatic subtleties which she had been considering all the evening, and had stumbled in the first step. But the mistake had been made, they were face to face with the question--it was for her not to give way. She had noticed the look that had passed between his eyes, and she was not surprised at the slight evasion of his answer, "But you are going to sing Kundry next year?" for she knew him to be naturally as averse to marriage as she was herself.

"I don't think I should succeed as Kundry. I don't know what the part means."

"But she's a penitent. You like penitents; your Elisabeth--"

"Elizabeth is different. Elizabeth is an inward penitent, Kundry is an external, and you know I can do nothing with externalities."

He did not understand, and it was impossible to explain without entering into a complete exposition of Ulick's idea regarding "Parsifal." The subject of "Parsifal" had always been disagreeable to him, but he had not been able to find any argument against the art of it. So the criticism "revolting hypocrisy," "externality," and the statement that the prelude to "Lohengrin" was an inspiration, whereas the prelude to "Parsifal" was but a marvellous piece of handicraft, delighted him. He had always known these things, but had not been able to give them expression. He wondered how Evelyn had attained to so clear an understanding, and then, unconsciously detecting another mind in the argument, he said--

"I wonder what Ulick Dean thinks of 'Parsifal?' Something original, I'm sure."

She could not explain that she had not intended to deceive; she could not tell him that she was so pressed and obsessed by the question of her marriage that she hardly knew what she was saying, and had repeated Ulick's ideas mechanically. She already seemed to stand convicted of insincerity. He evidently suspected her, and all the while he spoke of Ulick and "Parsifal," she suffered a sort of trembling sickness, and that he should have perceived whence her enlightenment had come embittered her against him. Suddenly he came to the end of what he had to say; their eyes met, and he said,--

"Very well, Evelyn, we'll be married next week; is that soon enough?"

The abruptness of his choice fell upon her so suddenly, that she answered stupidly that next week would do very well. She felt that she ought to get up and kiss him, and she was painfully conscious that her expression was the reverse of pleased.

"I don't want to limp to the altar; were it not for the gout I'd say to-morrow.... But something has happened, something has forced you to this?"

He did not dare to suggest scruples of conscience. But his thoughts were already back in Florence.

"Only that you often have said you'd like to marry me. One never knows if such things are true. It may have been mere gallantry on your part; on the other hand, I am vain enough to believe that perhaps you meant it." Then it seemed to her that she must be sincere. "As I am determined that our present relations shall cease, there was no help for it but to come and tell you."

Her eyes were cast down; the expression of her face was calm resolution, whereas his face betrayed anxiety, and the twitching and pallor of the eyes a secret indecision with which he was struggling.

"Then I suppose it is scruples of conscience.... You've been to Mass at St. Joseph's."

"We won't enter into that question. We've talked it for the last six years; you cannot change me."

The desire to please was inveterate in her, and she felt that she had never been so displeasing, and she was aware that he was showing to better advantage in this scene than she was. She wished that he had hesitated; if he had only given her some excuse for--She did not finish the sentence in her mind, but thought instead that she liked him better when he wasn't so good; goodness did not seem to suit him.

She wore a beautiful attractive gown, a mauve silk embroidered with silver irises, and he regretted his gout which kept him from the ball. He caught sight of her as she passed down the glittering floor, saving with a pretty movement of her shoulders the dress that was slipping from them, he saw himself dancing with her.... They passed in front of a mirror, and looking straight over her shoulder his eyes followed the tremulous sparkle of the diamond wings which she wore in her hair. Then, yielding to an impulse of which he was not ashamed, for it was as much affection as it was sensual, he drew over a chair--he would have knelt at her feet had it not been for his gout--and passing his arm about her waist, he said--

"Dearest, I'm very fond of you, you know that. It is not my fault if I prefer to be your lover rather than your husband." He kissed her on her shoulders, laying his cheek on her bosom. "Don't you believe that I am fond of you, Evelyn?"

"Yes, Owen, I think you are."

"Not a very enthusiastic reply. It used to be you who delighted to throw your arms about my neck. But all that is over and done with."

"One is not always in such humours, Owen."

Watching each other's eyes they were conscious of their souls; every moment it seemed as if their souls must float up and be discovered; and, while fearing discovery, there came a yearning to stand out of all shadow in the full light. But they could not tell their souls; words fell back abortive; and they recognised the mortal lot of alienation; and rebelling against it, he held her face, he sought her lips, but she turned her face aside, leaving him her cheek.

"Why do you turn your lips away? It is a long time since I've kissed you ... you're cold and indifferent lately, Evelyn."

A memory of Ulick shot through her mind, and he would have divined her thought if his perception had not been blinded by the passion which swayed him.

"No, Owen, no. We're an engaged couple; we're no longer lovers."

"And you think that we should begin by respecting the marriage ceremony?"

She seemed to lose sight of him, she perceived only the general idea, that outline of her life which he represented, and which she could in a way trace in the furniture of the room. It was in this room she had said she would be his mistress. It was from this room she had started for Paris. Her eyes lighted on the harpsichord. He had bought it in some vague intention of presenting it to her father, some day when they were reconciled; the viola da gamba he had bought for her sake; it was the poor little excuse he had devised for coming to see her at Dulwich.

She saw the Gainsborough: how strange and remote it seemed! She looked at the Corot, its sentimentality was an irritation. In the Chippendale bookcases there were many books she had given him; and the white chimney piece was covered with her photographs. There he was, a tall, thin man, elegant and attractive notwithstanding the forty-five years, dressed in a silk shirt and a black smoking suit. Their eyes met again, she could see that he was thinking it over; but it was all settled now, neither could draw back, and the moments were tense and silent; and as if confronted by some imminent peril, she wondered.

"You arranged that I should leave the stage when I married, and you say that we are to be married next week. You don't want me to throw up my engagement at Covent Garden? I should like to play Isolde."

"Of course you must play Isolde; I must hear you sing Isolde."

She felt that she must get up and thank him, she felt that she must be nice to him; and laying her hand on his shoulder, she said--

"I hope I don't seem ungrateful; you have always been very good to me, Owen. I hope I shall make a good wife."

"I think I am less changed than you; I don't think you care for me as you used to."

"Yes, I do, Owen, but I am not always the same. I can't help myself."

He watched her face; she had forgotten him, she was again thinking of herself. She had tried to be sincere, but again had been mastered by her mood. No, she did not dislike him, but she wished for an interval, a temporary separation. It seemed to her that she didn't want to see him for some weeks, some months, perhaps. If he would consent to such an alienation, she felt that she would come back fonder of him than ever. All this did not seem very sane, but she could not think otherwise, and the desire of departure was violent in her as a nostalgia.

"We have been very fond of each other. I wonder if we shall be as happy in married life? Do you think we shall?"

"I hope so, Owen, but somehow I don't see myself as Lady Asher."

"You know everyone--Lady Ascott, Lady. Somersdean, they are all your friends, it will be just the same."

"Yes, it'll be just the same."

He did not catch the significance of the repetition. He was thinking of the credit she would do him as Lady Asher. He heard his friends discussing his marriage at the clubs. She was going to Lady Ascott's ball, and would announce her engagement there. To-morrow everyone would be talking about it. He would like his engagement known, but not while she was on the stage. But when he mentioned this, she said she did not see why their engagement should be kept a secret. It did not matter much; he was quite ready to give way, but he could not understand why the remark should have angered her. And her obstinacy frightened him not a little. If he were to find a different woman in his wife from the woman he had loved in the opera singer!

"Evelyn, you have lived with me in spite of your scruples for the last six years; why should we not go on for one more year? When you have sung Kundry, we can be married."

"Owen, do you think you want to marry me? Is not your offer mere chivalry? _Noblesse oblige_?"

That he was still master of the situation caused a delicious pride to mount to his head. For a moment he could not answer, then he asked if she were sure that she had not come to care for someone else, and feeling this to be ineffective, he added--

"I've always noticed that when women change their affections, they become a prey to scruples of conscience."

"If I cared for anyone else, should I come to you to-night and offer to marry you?"

"You're a strange woman; it would not surprise me if the reason why you wish to be married is because you're afraid of a second lover. That would be very like you."

His words startled her in the very bottom of her soul; she had not thought of such a thing, but now he mentioned it, she was not sure that he had not guessed rightly.

How well he understood one side of her nature; how he failed to understand the other! It was this want in him that made marriage between them impossible. She smiled mysteriously, for she was thinking how far and how near he had always been.

"Tell me, Evelyn, tell me truly, is it on account of religious scruples, or is it because you are afraid of falling in love with Ulick Dean, that you came here to-night and asked me to marry you?"

"Owen, we can live in contradiction to our theories, but not in contradiction to our feelings, and you know that my life has always seemed to me fundamentally wrong."

For a moment he seemed to understand, but his egotism intervened, and a moment after he understood nothing, except that for some stupid morality she was about to break her artistic career sharp off.

He strove to think what was passing behind that forehead. He tried to read her soul in the rounded temples, the bright, nervous eyes. His and her understanding of life and the mystery of life were as wide apart as the earth and the moon, and he could but stare wondering. No inkling of the truth reached him. As he strove to understand her mind he grew irritated, and turned against that shadow religion which had always separated them. Without knowing why--almost in spite of himself--he began to argue with her. He reminded her of her inconsistencies. She had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband. If it had not been for her religion, he did not believe they would have thought of marriage, they would have gone on to the end as they had begun. The sound of his voice entered her ears, but the meaning of the words did not reach her brain, and when she had said that she had come to him not on account of Ulick, but on account of her conscience, she sat perplexed, trying to discover if she had told the truth.

"You're not listening, Evelyn."

"Yes, I am, Owen. You said that I had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband."

"If so, why then--"

They stared blankly at each other. Everything had been said. They were engaged to be married. What was the use of further argument? She mentioned that it was getting late, and that Lady Duckle was waiting for her.

"She will tell her first," he thought, "and she'll tell Lady Ascott. They'll all be talking of it at supper. 'So Owen has gone off at last,' they'll say. I'll hear of it at the club to-morrow."

"I wonder what Lady Ascott will think?" he said, as he put her into the carriage.

"I don't know.... I shall not go to the ball. Tell him to take me home."

She lay back in the blue shadows of the brougham, striving to come to terms with herself, to arrive at some plain conclusion. It seemed to her that she had been animated by an honest and noble purpose. She had gone to Owen in the intention of marrying him if he wished to marry her, because it had seemed to her that it was her duty to marry him. But everything had turned out the very opposite of what she had intended, and looking back upon the hour she had spent with him, it seemed to her that she had certainly deceived him. She certainly had deceived herself.

She could not believe that she was going to marry Owen. She felt that it was not to be, and before the presentiment her her soul paused. She asked herself why she felt that it was not to be. There was no reason; but she felt quite clear on the point, and could not combat the clear conviction. She began thinking the obvious drama--Owen discovering her with Ulick, declining ever to see her again, her suicide or his, etc. But she could not believe that Owen would decline ever to see her again even if--but she was not going to go wrong with Ulick, there was no use supposing such things, And again her thoughts paused, and like things frightened by the dark, withdrew silently, not daring to look further.

She met Ulick every night at the theatre, and she had him to sit with her in her dressing-room during the entr'actes.... She remembered the pleasure she had taken in these conversations, and the strange, whirling impulse which drew them all the while closer, until they dreaded the touching of their knees. She had taken him back in the carriage and he had kissed her; she had allowed him to kiss her the other night, and she knew that if she were alone with him again that she would not be able to resist the temptation. Her thoughts turned a little, and she considered what her life would be if she were to yield to Ulick. Her life would become a series of subterfuges, and in a flash of thought she saw how, after spending the afternoon with Ulick, she would come home to find Owen waiting for her: he would take her in his arms, she would have to free herself, and, feeling his breath upon her cheek, save herself somehow from his kiss. He would suspect and question her. He would say, "Give me your word of honour that Ulick Dean is not your lover;" and she heard herself pledge her word in a lie, and the lie would have to be repeated again and again.

Until she had met Ulick, she had not seen a man for years whose thoughts ranged above the gross pleasure of the moment, the pleasure of eating, of drinking, of love-making ... and she was growing like those people. The other night at dinner at the Savoy she had looked round the table at the men's faces, some seven or eight, varying in age from twenty-four to forty-eight, and she had said to herself, "Not one of these men has done anything worth doing, not one has even tried." Looking at the men of twenty-four, she had said to herself, "He will do all the man of forty-eight has done,--the same dinners, the same women, the same racecourses, the same shooting, the same tireless search after amusement, the same life unlit by any ideal." She was no better, Owen was no better. There was no hope for either of them? He had surrounded her with his friends, and she thought of the invitations ahead of her. Her profession of an opera singer chained her to this life.... She felt that a miracle would have to happen to extricate her from the social mire into which she was sinking, sinking.

To give up Ulick would only make matters worse. He was the plank she clung to in the shipwreck of all her convictions. She could not tell how or why, but the conviction was overpowering that she could not give him up. Happen what might happen, she must see him. If Owen were to go for a sea voyage.... In three or four months she would have acquired that something which he could give her and which was necessary to complete her soul. She seemed to be quite certain on this point, and she lay back in the brougham lost in vague wonderment. Her thoughts sank still deeper, and thoughts came to her that had never come before, that she had never dared to think before. Even if she were not done with Ulick when Owen returned, it seemed to her that she could make them and herself very happy; they both seemed necessary to her happiness, to her fulfilment; and in her dream, for she was not responsible for her thoughts, the enjoyment of this double love seemed to her natural and beautiful....

But she awoke from her dream frightened, and feeling like one who has lost the clue which was to lead her out of the labyrinth.

Instead of sending the footman to tell Lady Duckle that the carriage was waiting, Evelyn got out and went up to the drawing-room.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Olive, but I can't go with you. Tell Lady Ascott I am very sorry. Good-night, I'm going to my room."

"Oh, my dear Evelyn, not going ... and now that you're dressed."

Evelyn allowed herself to be persuaded. If she went to bed now she would not sleep. She went to the ball with Lady Duckle, and as she went round in the lancers, giving her hand first to one and then to the other, she heard a voice crying within her, "Why are you doing these things? They don't interest you at all." _

Read next: Chapter 22

Read previous: Chapter 20

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