Only yesterday she had received such a kind letter from him, offering to forgive everything if she would come back. So like her dear, unpractical dad to ask her to go back and suffer all the disgrace without having attained the end for which she had left home. If, as Owen had said, she went back with the finest soprano voice in Europe, and an engagement to sing at Covent Garden at a salary of L400 a week, the world would close its ears to scandal, the world would deny that any violation of its rules had been committed; but to return after an escapade of a week in Paris would be ruin. So, at Owen's persuasion, she had written a letter to her father explaining why she could not return. But her inability to obey her father did not detract from the fear which her disobedience caused her. She thought of the old man whom she loved so well grieving his heart out and thinking her, whom he loved so dearly, cruel and ungrateful. But what could she do? Go back and bring disgrace upon herself and upon her father? Ah, if she had known beforehand the suffering she was enduring, she did not think she would ever have gone away with Owen. It was all wrong, very wrong, and she had merited this punishment by her own grievous fault.... Lady Duckle was coming that evening—the woman whom she was going to live with—an unfortunate day for her to arrive; if Madame Savelli thought that she, Evelyn, had no voice to speak of, the secret could not be kept from her. Lady Duckle would know her for a poor little fool who had been wheedled from her home, and on the pretext that she was to become the greatest singer in Europe. It was all horrid.

And when Owen returned he found Evelyn in tears. But with his scrupulous tact he avoided any allusion to her grief, and while she bathed her eyes she thanked him in her heart for this. Her father would have fretted and fussed and maddened her with questions, but Owen cheered her with sanguine smiles and seemed to look forward to her success as a natural sequence, any interruption to which it would be idle to anticipate; and he cleverly drew her thoughts from doubt in her own ability into consideration of the music she was going to sing. She suggested the jewel song in "Faust," or the waltz in "Romeo and Juliet." But he was of the opinion that she had better sing the music she was in the habit of singing; for choice, one of Purcell's songs, the "Epithalamium," or the song from the "Indian Queen."

"Savelli doesn't know the music; it will interest her. The other things she hears every day of her life."

"But I haven't the music—I don't know the accompaniments."

"The music is here."

"It is very thoughtful of you."

"Henceforth it must be my business to be thoughtful."

They descended the hotel staircase very slowly, seeing themselves in the tall mirrors on the landings. The bright courtyard glittered through the glass verandah; it was full of carriages. Owen signed to his coachman. They got into the victoria, and a moment after were passing through the streets, turning in and out. But not a word did they speak, for the poison of doubt had entered into his, as it had into her, soul. He had begun to ask himself if he was mistaken—if she had really this wonderful voice, or if it only existed in his imagination? True it was that everyone who had heard her sing thought the same; but the last time he had heard her, had not her voice sounded a little thin? He had doubts, too, about her power of passionate interpretation.... She had a beautiful voice—there could be no doubt on that point—but a beautiful voice might be heard to a very great disadvantage on the stage. Moreover, could she sing florid music? Of course, the "Epithalamium" she was going to sing was as florid as it could be. Purcell had suited it to his own singing.... A woman did not always sing to an orchestra as well as to a single instrument. That was only when the singer was an insufficient musician. Evelyn was an excellent musician.... If a woman had the loveliest voice, and was as great a musician as Wagner himself, it would profit her nothing if she had not the strength to stand the wear and tear of rehearsals. He looked at Evelyn, and calculated her physical strength. She was a rather tall and strongly-built girl, but the Wagnerian bosom was wanting. He had always considered a large bosom to be a dreadful deformity. A bosom should be an indication, a hint; a positive statement he viewed with abhorrence. And he paused to think if he would be willing to forego his natural and cultured taste in female beauty and accept those extravagant growths of flesh if they could be proved to be musical necessities. But Evelyn was by no means flat-chested ... and he remembered certain curves and plenitudes with satisfaction. Then, catching sight of Evelyn's frightened face, he forced himself to invent conversation. That was the Madeleine, a fine building, in a way; and the boulevard they had just entered was the Boulevard Malesherbes, which was called after a celebrated French lawyer. The name Haussmann recalled the Second Empire, and he ransacked his memory for anecdotes. But soon his conversation grew stilted—even painful. He could continue it no longer, and, taking her hand, he assured her that, if she did not sing well, she should come to Madame Savelli again. Evelyn's face lighted up, and she said that what had frightened her was the finality of the decision—a few minutes in which she might not be able to sing at all. Owen reproved her. How could she think that he would permit such a barbarism? It really did not matter a brass button whether she sang well or ill on this particular day; if she did not do herself justice, another appointment should be made. He had money enough to hire Madame Savelli to listen to her for the next six months, if it were required.

He was truly sorry for her. Poor little girl! it really was a dreadful ordeal. Yet he had never seen her look better. What a difference dressing her had made! Her manner, too, had improved. That was the influence of his society. By degrees, he'd get rid of all her absurd ideas. But he sorely wished that Madame Savelli's verdict would prove him right—not for his sake—it didn't matter to him—such teeth, such hands, such skin, such eyes and hair! Voice or no voice, he had certainly got the most charming mistress in Europe! But, if she did happen to have a great voice it would make matters so much better for them. He had plenty of money—twenty thousand lying idle—but it was better that she should earn money. It would save her reputation ... in every way it would be better. If she had a voice, and were a success, this liaison would be one of the most successful things in his life. If he were wrong, they'd have to get on as best they could, but he didn't think that he could be altogether mistaken.

The door was opened by a footman in livery, and they ascended half-a-dozen steps into the house. Then, off a wide passage, a door was opened, and they found themselves in a great saloon with polished oak floor. There was hardly any furniture—three or four chairs, some benches against the walls and a grand piano. The mantelpiece was covered with photographs, and there were life-sized photographs in frames on the walls. Owen pointed to one of a somewhat stout woman in evening-dress, and he whispered an illustrious name.

A moment after madame entered.

She was of medium height, thin and somewhat flat-chested. Her hair was iron-grey, and the face was marked with patches of vivid colouring. The mouth was a long, determined line, and the lines of the hips asserted themselves beneath the black silk dress. She glanced quickly at Evelyn as she went towards Sir Owen.

"This is the young lady of whom you spoke to me?"

"Yes, madame, it is she. Let me introduce you. Madame Savelli—Miss Evelyn Innes."

"Does mademoiselle wish to sing as a professional or as an amateur?"

The question was addressed at once to Evelyn and to Owen, and, while Evelyn hesitated with the French words, Owen answered—

"Mademoiselle will be guided by your advice."

"They all say that; however, we shall see. Will mademoiselle sing to me? Does mademoiselle speak French?"

"Yes, a little," Evelyn replied, timidly.

"Oh, very good. Has mademoiselle studied music?"

"Yes; my father is a musician, but he only cares for the very early music, and I have hardly ever touched a piano, but I play the harpsichord.... My instrument is the viola da gamba."

"The harpsichord and the viola da gamba! That is very interesting, but"—and Madame Savelli laughed good-naturedly—"unfortunately we have no harpsichord here, nor yet a spinet only the humble piano."

"Miss Innes will be quite satisfied with your piano, Madame Savelli."

"Now, Sir Owen, I will not have you get cross with me. I must always have my little pleasantry. Does he get cross with you like that, Miss Innes?"

"I didn't get cross with you, Madame Savelli."

"You wanted to, but I would not let you—and because I regretted I had not a harpsichord, only a humble piano! Mademoiselle knows, I suppose, all the church songs. I only know operas.... You see, Sir Owen, you cannot silence me; I will have my little pleasantry. I only know opera, and have nothing but the humble piano. But, joking apart, mademoiselle wants to study serious opera."

"Yes; mademoiselle intends to study for the stage, not for the church."

"Then I will teach her."

"You have three classes here. Mademoiselle would like to go into the opera class."

"In the opera class I How you do go on, Sir Owen! If mademoiselle can go into the opera class next year, I shall be more than satisfied, astonished."

"Perhaps you'll be able to say better if mademoiselle will be able to go into the opera class when you have heard her sing."

"But I know, my dear Sir Owen, that is impossible. You don't believe me. Well, I am prepared to be surprised. It matters not to me. Mademoiselle can go into the opera class in three months if she is sufficiently advanced. Will mademoiselle sing to me? Are these her songs?" Madame Savelli took the music out of Sir Owen's hands. "I can see that this music would sound better on the harpsichord or the spinet.... Now, Sir Owen, I see you are getting angry again."

"I'm not angry, Madame Savelli—no one could be angry with you—only mademoiselle is rather nervous."

"Then perhaps my pleasantry was inexpedient. Let me see—this is it, isn't it?" she said, running her fingers through the first bars.... "But perhaps you would like to accompany mademoiselle?"

"Which would you like, Evelyn?"

"You, dear; I should be too nervous with Madame Savelli."

Owen explained, and madame gave him her place at the piano with alacrity, and took a seat far away by the fireplace. Evelyn sang Purcell's beautiful wedding song, full of roulades, grave pauses and long-sustained notes, and when she had finished Owen signed to madame not to speak. "Now, the song from the 'Indian Queen.' You sang capitally," he whispered to Evelyn.

And, thus encouraged, she poured all her soul and all the pure melody of her voice into this music, at once religious and voluptuous, seemingly the rapture of a nun that remembrance has overtaken and for the moment overpowered. When she had done, Madame Savelli jumped from her chair, and seizing her by both hands said,—

"If you'll stop with me for a year, I'll make something wonderful of you."

Then without another word she ran out of the room, leaving the door open behind her, and a few moments after they heard her calling on the stairs to her husband.

"Come down at once; come down, I've found a star."

"Then she thinks I've a good voice?"

"I should think so indeed. She won't get over the start you've given her for the next six months."

"Are you sure, Owen? Are you sure she's not laughing at us?"

"Laughing at us? She's calling for her husband to come down. She's shouting to him that she's found a star."

Then the joy that rose up in Evelyn's heart blinded her eyes so that she could not see, and she seemed to lose sense of what was happening. It was as if she were going to swoon.

"I have told her," Madame Savelli said to her husband, who followed her into the room, "that, if she will remain a year with me, I'll make something wonderful of her. And you will stay with me, my dear...."

Owen thought that this was the moment to mention the fact that Evelyn was the daughter of the famous Madame Innes.

Monsieur Savelli raised his bushy eyebrows.

"I knew your mother, mademoiselle. If you have a voice like hers—"

"In a year, if she will remain with me, she will have twice the voice her mother had. Mademoiselle must go into the opera class at once."

"I thought you said that such a thing could not be; that no pupil of yours had ever gone straight into the opera class?"

Madame Savelli's grey eyes laughed.

"Ah! I was mistaken.... I had forgotten that all the other classes are full. There is no room for Miss Innes in the other classes. It is against all precedence; it will create much jealousy, but it can't be helped. She must go straight into the opera class. When will mademoiselle begin? The sooner the better."

"Next Monday. Will that be soon enough?"

"On Monday I'll begin to teach her the role of Marguerite. Such a thing was never heard of; but then mademoiselle's voice is one such as one never hears."

Turning to her husband, she said—

"You see my husband is looking at me. Yes, you are looking at me. You think I have gone mad, but he'll not think I've gone mad when he hears mademoiselle sing. Will mademoiselle be so kind?"

Evelyn felt she could not sing again, and, turning suddenly away, she walked to the window and watched the cabs going by. She heard Owen ask Madame and Monsieur Savelli to excuse her. He said that madame's praise had proved too much for her; that her nerves had given way. Then he came over and spoke to her gently. She looked at him through her tears; but she could not trust herself to speak, nor yet to walk across the room and bid Monsieur and Madame Savelli good-bye. She felt she must die of shame or happiness, and plucked at Owen's sleeve. She was glad to get out of that room; and the moments seemed like years. They could not speak in the glaring of the street. But fortunately their way was through the park, and when they passed under the shade of some overhanging boughs, she looked at him.

"Well, little girl, what do you think? Everything is all right now. It happened even better than I expected."

She wiped away her tears.

"How foolish I am to cry like this. But I could not bear it; my nerves gave way. It was so sudden. I'm afraid those people will think me a little fool. But you don't know, Owen, what I have suffered these last few days. I don't want to worry you, but there were times when I thought I couldn't stand it any longer. I thought that God might punish me by taking my voice from me. Just fancy if I had not been able to sing at all! It would have made you look a fool. You would have hated me for that; but now, even if I should lose my voice between this and next Monday.... Did I sing well, Owen? Did I sing as well as ever you heard me sing?"

"I've heard you sing better, but you sang well enough to convince Savelli that you'll have the finest voice in Europe by this time next year. That's good enough for you, isn't it? You don't want any more, do you?"

"No, no, half that would do, half that; I only want to know that it is all true." Tears again rose to her eyes. "I mean," she said, laughing, "that I want to know that I am sitting by you in the carriage; that Madame Savelli has heard me sing; that she said that I should be a great singer. Did she say that?"

"Yes, she said you would be a great singer."

"Then why does it not seem true? But nothing seems true, not even Paris. It all seems like a dazzling, scattered dream, like spots of light, and every moment I fear that it will pass away, and that I shall wake up and find myself in Dulwich; that I shall see my viola da gamba standing in the corner; that a rap at the front door will tell me that a pupil has come for a lesson."

"Do you remember the lessons that you gave me on the viola da gamba?"

She looked at him beseechingly.

"Then it is true. I suppose it is true, but I wish I could feel this life to be true."

She looked up and saw the clouds moving across the sky; she looked down and saw the people passing along the streets.

"In a few days, in a few weeks, this life will seem quite real. But, if you cannot bear the present, how will you bear the success that is to come?"

"When I was a tiny girl, the other girls used to say, 'Evey, dear, do make that funny noise in your throat,' and that was my trill. But since mother's death everything went wrong; it seemed that I would never get out of Dulwich. I never should have if it had not been for you. I had ceased to believe that I had a voice."

"In that throat there are thousands of pounds."

Evelyn put her hand to her throat to assure herself that it was still on her shoulders.

"I wonder, I wonder. To think that in a year—in a year and a half—I shall be singing on the stage! They will throw me bouquets, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, you need have no fear about that; this park would not suffice to grow all the flowers that will be thrown at your feet."

"It seems impossible that I—poor, miserable I—should be moving towards such splendour. I wonder if I shall ever get there, and, if I do get there, if I shall be able to live through it. I cannot yet see myself the great singer you describe. Yet I suppose it is all quite certain."

"Quite certain."

"Then why can't I imagine it?"

"We cannot imagine ourselves in other than our present circumstances; the most commonplace future is as unimaginable as the most extravagant."

"I suppose that is so."

The carriage stopped at the Continental, and he asked her what she would like to do. It was just five.

"Come and have a cup of tea in the Rue Cambon."

She consented, and, after tea, he said, standing with one foot on the carriage step—

"If you'll allow me to advise you, you will go for a drive in the Bois by yourself. I want to see some pictures."

"May I not come?"

"Certainly, if you like, but I don't think you could give your attention to pictures; you're thinking of yourself, and you want to be alone with yourself—nothing else would interest you."

A pretty flush of shame came into her cheeks. He had seen to the bottom of her heart, and discovered that of which she herself was not aware. But, now that he had told her, she knew that she did want to be alone—not alone in a room, but alone among a great number of people. A drive in the Bois would be a truly delicious indulgence of her egotism. The Champs Elysees floated about her happiness, the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne seemed to stretch out and to lead to the theatre of her glory; and, looking at the lake, its groups of pines, its gondola-like boats, she recalled, and with little thrills of pleasure, the exact words that madame had used—

"If you will stay a year with me, I'll make something wonderful of you." "Was there ever such happiness? Can it be true? Then I am wonderful—perhaps the most wonderful person here. Those women, however haughty they may look, what are they to me? I am wonderful. With not one would I change places, for I am going to be something wonderful." And the word sang sweeter in her ears than the violins in "Lohengrin." ... "Owen loves me. I have the nicest lover in the world. All this good fortune has happened to me. Oh, to me! If father could only know. But Owen thinks that will be all right. Father will forgive me when I come back the wonderful singer that I am—that I shall be.... If anyone could hear me, they would think I was mad. I can't help it.... She'll make something wonderful of me, and father will forgive me everything. We always loved each other. We've always been pals, dear dad. Oh, how I wish he had heard Madame Savelli say, 'If you will stop with me a year, I'll make something wonderful of you!' I will write to him ... it will cheer him up."

Then, seeing the poplars that lined the avenue, beautiful and tall in the evening, she thought of Owen. He had said they were the trees of the evening. She had not understood, and he had explained that we only see poplars in the sunset; they appear with the bats and the first stars.

"How clever he is, and he is my lover! It is dreadfully wicked, but I wonder what Madame Savelli said to her husband about my voice. She meant all she said; there can be no doubt about that."

Catching sight of some passing faces, Evelyn thought how, in two little years, at this very hour, the same people would be returning from the Bois to hear her sing—what? Elsa? Elizabeth? Margaret? She imagined herself in these parts, and sang fragments of the music as it floated into her mind. She was impelled to extravagance. She would have liked to stand up in her carriage and sing aloud, nothing seemed to matter, until she remembered that she must not make a fool of herself before Lady Duckle. And that she might walk the fever out of her blood, she called to the coachman to stop, and she walked down the Champs Elysees rapidly, not pausing to take breath till she reached the Place de la Concorde; and she almost ran the rest of the way, so that she might not be late for dinner. When she entered the hotel, she came suddenly upon Owen on the verandah. He was sitting there engaged in conversation with an elderly woman—a woman of about fifty, who, catching sight of her, whispered something to him.

"Evelyn.... This is Lady Duckle."

"Sir Owen has been telling me, Miss Innes, what Madame Savelli said about your voice. I do not know how to congratulate you. I suppose such a thing has not happened before." And her small, grey eyes gazed in envious wonderment, as if seeking to understand how such extraordinary good fortune should have befallen the tall, fair girl who stood blushing and embarrassed in her happiness. Owen drew a chair forward.

"Sit down, Evelyn, you look tired."

"No, I'm not tired ... but I walked from the Arc de Triomphe."

"Walked! Why did you walk?"

Evelyn did not answer, and Lady Duckle said—

"Sir Owen tells me that you'll surely succeed in singing Wagner—that I shall be converted."

"Lady Duckle is a heretic."

"No, my dear Owen, I'm not a heretic, for I recognise the greatness of the music, and I could hear it with pleasure if it were confined to the orchestra, but I can find no pleasure in listening to a voice trying to accompany a hundred instruments. I heard 'Lohengrin' last season. I was in Mrs. Ayre's box—a charming woman—her husband is an American, but he never comes to London. I presented her at the last Drawing-Room. She had a supper party afterwards, and when she asked me what I'd have to eat, I said, 'Nothing with wings' ... Oh, that swan!"

Her grey hair was drawn up and elaborately arranged, and Evelyn noticed three diamond rings and an emerald ring on her fat, white fingers. There had been moments she said, when she had thought the people on the stage were making fun of them—"such booing!"—they had all shouted themselves hoarse—such wandering from key to key.

"Hoping, I suppose, that in the end they'd hit off the right ones. And that trick of going up in fifths. And then they go up in fifths on the half notes. I said if they do that again, I'll leave the theatre."

Evelyn could see that Owen liked Lady Duckle, and her conversation, which at first might have seemed extravagant and a little foolish, was illuminated with knowledge and a vague sense of humour which was captivating. Her story of how she had met Rossini in her early youth, and the praise he had bestowed on her voice, and his intention of writing an opera for her, seemed fanciful enough, but every now and then some slight detail inspired the suspicion that there was perhaps more truth in what she was saying than appeared at first hearing.

"Why did he not write the opera, Olive?"

"It was just as he was ill, when he lived in Rue Monsieur. And he said he was afraid he was not equal to writing down so many notes. Poor old man! I can still see him sitting in his arm-chair."

She seemed to have been on terms of friendship with the most celebrated men of the time. Her little book entitled Souvenirs of Some Great Composers was alluded to, and Owen mentioned that at that time she was the great Parisian beauty.

"But instead of going on the stage, I married Lord Duckle."

And this early mistake she seemed to consider as sufficient explanation for all subsequent misfortunes. Evelyn wondered what these might be, and Owen said—

"The most celebrated singers are glad to sing at Lady Duckle's afternoons; no reputation is considered complete till it has received her sanction."

"That is going too far, Owen; but it is true that nearly all the great singers have been heard at my house."

Owen begged Evelyn to get ready for dinner, and as she stood waiting for the lift, she saw him resume confidential conversation with Lady Duckle. They were, she knew, making preparations for her future life, and this was the woman she was going to live with for the next few years! The thought gave her pause. She dried her hands and hastened downstairs. They were still talking in the verandah just as she had left them. Owen signed to the coachman and told him to drive to Durand's. They were dining in a private room, and during dinner the conversation constantly harked back to the success that Evelyn had achieved that afternoon. Owen told the story in well-turned sentences. His eyes were generally fixed on Lady Duckle, and Evelyn sat listening and feeling, as Owen intended she should feel, like the heroine of a fairy tale. She laughed nervously when, imitating Madame Savelli's accent, he described how she had said, "If you'll stop with me for a year, I'll make something wonderful of you." Lady Duckle leaned across the table, glancing from time to time at Evelyn, as if to assure herself that she was still in the presence of this extraordinary person, and murmured something about having the honour of assisting at what she was sure would be a great career.

Owen noticed that Evelyn seemed preoccupied, and did not respond very eagerly to Lady Duckle's advances. He wondered if she suspected him of having been Lady Duckle's lover.... Evelyn was thinking entirely of Lady Duckle herself, trying to divine the real woman that was behind all this talk of great men and social notabilities. One phrase let drop seemed to let in some light on the mystery. Talking of her, Lady Duckle said that it was only necessary to know what road we wanted to walk in to succeed, and instantly Lady Duckle appeared to her as one who had never selected a road. She seemed to have walked a little way on all roads, and her face expressed a life of many wanderings, straying from place to place. There was nothing as she said, worth doing that she had not done, but she had clearly accomplished nothing. As she watched her she feared, though she could not say what she feared. At bottom it was a suspicion of the deteriorating influence that Lady Duckle would exercise, must exercise, upon her—for were they not going to live together for years? And this companionship would be necessarily based on subterfuge and deceit. She would have to talk to her of her friendship for Owen. She could never speak of Owen to Lady Duckle as her lover. But as Evelyn listened to this pleasant, garrulous woman talking, and talking very well, about music and literature, she could not but feel that she liked her, and that her easy humour and want of principle would make life comfortable and careless. She was not a saint; she could not expect a saint to chaperon her; nor did she want a saint. At that moment her spirits rose. She wanted Owen, and she loved him the more for the tact he had shown in finding Lady Duckle for her. She accepted the good lady's faults with reckless enthusiasm, and when they got back to the hotel she took the first occasion to whisper that she liked Lady Duckle and was sure they'd get on very well together.

"Owen, dear, I'm so happy, I don't know what to do with myself. I did enjoy my drive to the Bois. I never was so happy and I don't seem to be enjoying myself enough; I should like to sit up all night to think of it."

"There's no reason why you shouldn't."

"Only I should feel tired in the morning.... Are you coming to my room?"

"Unless you want me not to. Do you want me to come?"

"Do I look as if I didn't?"

"Your eyes are shining like stars. It is worth while taking trouble to make you happy. You do enjoy it so.... We'll go upstairs now. We can't talk here, Lady Duckle is coming back. Leave your door ajar."

"You don't think she suspects?"

"It doesn't matter what people suspect, the essential is that they shouldn't know. I've lots to tell you. I've arranged everything with Lady Duckle."

"I was just telling Miss Innes that in three years she'll probably be singing at the Opera House. In a year or a year and a half she'll have learnt all that Savelli can teach her. Isn't that so?"

The question was discussed for a while, and then Lady Duckle mentioned that it was getting late. It was an embarrassing moment when Owen stopped the lift and they bade her good-night. She was on the third, they were on the second floor. As Evelyn went down the passage, Owen stood to watch her sloping shoulders; they seemed to him like those of an old miniature. When she turned the corner a blankness came over him; things seemed to recede and he was strangely alone with himself as he strolled into his room. But standing before the glass, his heart was swollen with a great pride. He remarked in his eyes the strange, enigmatic look which he admired in Titian and Vandyke, and he thought of himself as a principle—as a force; he wondered if he were an evil influence, and lost himself in moody meditations concerning the mystery of the attractions he presented to women. But suddenly he remembered that in a few minutes she would be in his arms, and he closed his eyes as if to delight more deeply in the joy that she presented to his imagination. So intense was his desire that he could not believe that he was her lover, that he was going to her room, and that nothing could deprive him of this delight. Why should such rare delight happen to him? He did not know. What matter, since it was happening? She was his. It was like holding the rarest jewel in the world in the hollow of his hand.

That she was at that moment preparing to receive him brought a little dizziness into his eyes, and compelled him to tear off his necktie. Then, vaguely, like one in a dream, he began to undress, very slowly, for she had told him to wait a quarter of an hour before coming to her room. He examined his thin waist as he tied himself in blue silk pyjamas, and he paused to admire his long, straight feet before slipping them into a pair of black velvet slippers. He turned to glance at his watch, and to kill the last five minutes of the prescribed time he thought of Evelyn's scruples. She would have to read certain books—Darwin and Huxley he relied upon, and he reposed considerable faith in Herbert Spencer. But there were books of a lighter kind, and their influence he believed to be not less insidious. He took one out of his portmanteau—the book which he said, had influenced him more than any other. It opened at his favourite passage—

'I am a man of the Homeric time; the world in which I live is not mine, and I know nothing of the society which surrounds me. I am as pagan as Alcibiades or as Phidias.... I never gathered on Golgotha the flowers of the Passion, and the deep stream which flowed from from the side of the Crucified and made a red girdle round the world never bathed me in its tide. I believe earth to be as beautiful as heaven, and I think that precision of form is virtue. Spirituality is not my strong point; I love a statue better than a phantom.' ... He could remember no further; he glanced at the text and was about to lay the book down, when, on second thoughts, he decided to take it with him.

Her door was ajar; he pushed it open and then stopped for moment, surprised at his good fortune. And he never forgot that instant's impression of her body's beauty. But before he could snatch the long gauze wrapper from her, she had slipped her arm through the sleeves, and, joyous as a sunlit morning hour, she came forward and threw herself into his arms. Even then he could not believe that some evil accident would not rob him of her. He said some words to that effect, and often tried to recall her answer to them; he was only sure that it was exquisitely characteristic of her, as were all her answers—as her answer was that very evening when he told her that he would have to go to London at the end of the week.

"But only for some days. You don't think that I shall be changed? You're not afraid that I shall love you less?"

"No; I was not thinking of you, dear. I know that you'll not be changed; I was thinking that I might be."

He withdrew the arm that was round her, and, raising himself upon his elbow, he looked at her.

"You've told me more about yourself in that single phrase than if you had been talking an hour."

"Dearest Owen, let me kiss you."

It seemed to them wonderful that they should be permitted to kiss each other so eagerly, and it sometimes was a still more intense rapture to lie in each other's arms and talk to each other.

The dawn surprised them still talking, and it seemed to them as if nothing had been said. He was explaining his plans for her life. They were, he thought, going to live abroad for five, six, or seven years. Then Evelyn would go to London, to sing, preceded by an extraordinary reputation. But the first thing to do was to get a house in Paris.

"We cannot stop at this hotel; we must have a house. I have heard of a charming hotel in the Rue Balzac."

"In the Rue Balzac! Is there a street called after him? Is it on account of the name you want me to live there?"

"No; I don't think so, but perhaps the name had something to do with it—one never knows. But I always liked the street."

"Which of his books is it like?"

"Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan"

They laughed and kissed each other.

"At the bottom of the street is the Avenue de Friedland; the tram passes there, and it will take you straight to Madame Savelli's."

The sparrows had begun to shrill in the courtyard, and their eyes ached with sleep.

"Five or six years—you'll be at the height of your fame. They will pass only too quickly," he added.

He was thinking what his age would be then. "And when they have passed, it will seem like a dream."

"Like a dream," she repeated, and she laid her face on the pillow where his had lain.



CHAPTER TWELVE

As she lay between sleeping and waking, she strove to grasp the haunting, fugitive idea, but shadows of sleep fell, and in her dream there appeared two Tristans, a fair and a dark. When the shadows were lifted and she thought with an awakening brain, she smiled at the absurdity, and, striving to get close to her idea, to grip it about its very loins, she asked herself how much of her own life she could express in the part, for she always acted one side of her character. Her pious girlhood found expression in the Elizabeth, and what she termed the other side of her character she was going to put on the stage in the character of Isolde. Again sleep thickened, and she found it impossible to follow her idea. It eluded her; she could not grasp it. It turned to a dream, a dream which she could not understand even while she dreamed it. But as she awaked, she uttered a cry. It happened to be the note she had to sing when the curtain goes up and Isolde lies on the couch yearning for Tristan, for assuagement of the fever which consumes her. All other actresses had striven to portray an Irish princess, or what they believed an Irish princess might be. But she cared nothing for the Irish princess, and a great deal for the physical and mental distress of a woman sick with love.

Her power of recalling her sensations was so intense, that in her warm bed she lived again the long, aching evenings of the long winter in Dulwich, before she went away with Owen. She saw again the Spring twilight in the scrap of black garden, where she used to stand watching the stars. She remembered the dread craving to worship them, the anguish of remorse and fear on her bed, her visions of distant countries and the gleam of eyes which looked at her through the dead of night. How miserable she had been in that time—in those months. She had wanted to sing, and she could not, and she had wanted—she had not known what was the matter with her. That feeling (how well she remembered it!) as if she wanted to go mad! And all those lightnesses of the brain she could introduce in the opening scene—the very opening cry was one of them. And with these two themes she thought she could create an Isolde more intense than the Isolde of the fat women whom she had seen walking about the stage, lifting their arms and trying to look like sculpture.

No one whom she had seen had attempted to differentiate between Isolde before she drinks and after she has drunk the love potion, and, to avoid this mistake, she felt that she would only have to be true to herself. After the love potion had been drunk, the moment of her life to put on the stage was its moment of highest sexual exaltation. Which was that? There were so many, she smiled in her doze. Perhaps the most wonderful day of her life was the day Madame Savelli had said, "If you'll stay with me for a year, I'll make something wonderful of you." She recalled the drive in the Bois, and she saw again the greensward, the poplars, and the stream of carriages. She had hardly been able so resist springing up in the carriage and singing to the people; she had wanted to tell them what Madame Savelli had said. She had wished to cry to them, "In two years all you people will be going to the opera to hear me." What had stopped her was the dread that it might not happen. But it had happened! That was the evening she had met Olive. She could see the exact spot. Although Olive had only just arrived, she had been up to her room and put on a pair of slippers. They had dined at a cafe, and all through dinner she had longed to be alone with Owen, and after dinner the time had seemed so long. Before going up in the lift he had asked her if he might come to her room. In a quarter of an hour, she had said, but he had come sooner than she expected, and she remembered slipping her arm into a gauze wrapper. How she had flung herself into his arms! That was the moment of her life to put upon the stage when she and Tristan look at each other after drinking the love potion.

In the second act Tristan lives through her. She is the will to live; and if she ultimately consents to follow him into the shadowy land, it is for love of him. But of his desire for death she understands nothing; all through the duet it is she who desires to quench this desire with kisses. That was her conception of women's mission, and that was her own life with Owen; it was her love that compelled him to live down his despondencies. So her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view, she would hold up the universal soul, and people would be afraid to turn their heads lest they should catch each other's eyes. But was not a portrayal of sexual passion such as she intended very sinful? It could not fail to suggest sinful thoughts.... She could not help what folk thought—that was their affair. She had turned her back upon all such scruples, and this last one she contemptuously picked up and tossed aside like a briar.

Her eyes opened and she gazed sleepily into the twilight of mauve curtains, and dreaded her maid's knock. "It must be nearly eight," she thought, and she strove to pick up the thread of her lost thoughts. But a sharp rap at her door awakened her, and a tall, spare figure crossed the room. As the maid was about to draw the curtains, Evelyn cried to her—

"Oh, wait a moment, Herat.... I'm so tired. I didn't get to bed till two o'clock."

"Mademoiselle forgets that she told me to awaken her very early. Mademoiselle said she wanted to go for a long drive to the other end of London before she went to rehearsal."

Merat's logic seemed a little severe for eight o'clock in the morning, and Evelyn believed that her conception of Isolde had suffered from the interruption.

"Then I am not to draw the curtains? Mademoiselle will sleep a little longer. I will return when it is time for mademoiselle to go to rehearsal."

"Did you say it was half-past eight, Merat?"

"Yes, mademoiselle. The coachman is not quite sure of the way, and will have to ask it. This will delay him."

"Oh, yes, I know.... But I must sleep a little longer."

"Then mademoiselle will not get up. I will take mademoiselle's chocolate away."

"No, I'll have my chocolate," Evelyn said, rousing herself. "Merat, you are very insistent."

"What is one to do? Mademoiselle specially ordered me to wake her.... Mademoiselle said that—"

"I know what I said. I'll see how I feel when I have had my chocolate. The coachman had better get a map and look out the way upon it."

She lay back on the pillow and regretted she had come to England. There was no reason why she should not have thrown over this engagement. It wouldn't have been the first. Owen had always told her that money ought never to tempt her to do anything she didn't like. He had persuaded her to accept this engagement, though he knew that she did not want to sing in London. How often before had she not refused, and with his approbation? But then his pleasure was involved in the refusal or the acceptance of the engagement. He did not mind her throwing over a valuable offer to sing if he wanted her to go yachting with him. Men were so selfish. She smiled, for she knew she was acting a little comedy with herself. "But, quite seriously, I am annoyed with Owen. The London engagement—no, of course, I could not go on refusing to sing in London." She was annoyed with him because he had dissuaded her from doing what her instinct had told her was the right thing to do. She had wished to go to her father the moment she set foot in England, and beg his forgiveness. When they had arrived at Victoria, she had said that she would like to take the train to Dulwich. There happened to be one waiting. But they had had a rough crossing; she was very tired, and he had suggested she should postpone her visit to the next day. But next day her humour was different. She knew quite well that the sooner she went the easier it would be for her to press her father to forgive her, to entrap him into reconciliation. She had imagined that she could entrap her father into forgiving her by throwing herself into his arms, or with the mere phrase, "Father, I've come to ask you how I sing." But she had not been able to overcome her aversion to going to Dulwich, and every time the question presented itself a look of distress came into her face. "If I only knew what he would say when he sees me. If the first word were over—the 'entrance,'" she added, with a smile.

It was hopeless to argue with her, so Owen said that if she did not go before the end of the week it would be better to postpone her visit until after her first appearance.

"But supposing I fail. I never cared for my Margaret. Besides, it was mother's great part. He'll think me as bad an artist as I have been a bad daughter. Owen, dear, have patience with me, I know I'm very weak, but I dread a face of stone."

Neither spoke for a long while. Then she said, "If I had only gone to him last year. You remember he had written me a nice letter, but instead I went away yachting; you wanted to go to Greece."

"Evelyn, don't lay the blame on me; you wanted to go too.... I hope that when you do see your father you will say that it was not all my fault."

"That what was not your fault, dear?"

"Well—I mean that it was not all my fault that we went away together. You know that I always liked your father. I was interested in his ideas; I do not want him to think too badly of me. You will say something in my favour. After all, I haven't treated you badly. If I didn't marry you, it was because—"

"Dearest Owen, you've been very good to me."

He felt that to ask her again to go to see her father would only distress her. He said instead—

"I hear a great deal about your father's choir. It appears to be quite the fashion to hear high mass at St. Joseph's."

"Father always said that Palestrina would draw all London, if properly given. Last Sunday he gave a mass by Vittoria; I longed to go. He'll never forgive me for not going to hear his choir. It is strange that we both should have succeeded—he with Palestrina, I with Wagner."

"Yes, it is strange.... But you promise me that you'll go and see him as soon as you've sung Margaret—the following day."

"Yes, dear, I promise you I'll do that."

"You'll send him a box for the first night?"

"He wouldn't sit in a box. If he went at all, it would be in some obscure place where he would not be seen."

"You had better send him a box, a stall and a dress circle, then he can take his choice.... But perhaps you had better not send. His presence among the audience would only make you nervous."

"No, on the contrary, his presence would make me sing."

For whatever reason she had certainly sung and acted with exceptional force and genius, and Margaret was at once lifted out of the obscurity into which it was slipping and took rank with her Elizabeth and her Elsa. As they drove home together in the brougham after the performance, Owen assured her that she had infused a life and meaning into the part, and that henceforth her reading would have to be "adopted."

"I wonder if father was there? He was not in the box. Did you look in the stalls?"

"Yes, but he was not there. You'll go and see him to-morrow."

"No, not to-morrow, dear."

"Why not to-morrow?"

"Because I want him to see the papers. He may not have been in the theatre; on Thursday night is Lady Ascott's ball; then on Friday—I'll go and see father on Friday. I'll try to summon courage. But there is a rehearsal of 'Tannhaeuser' on Friday."

And so that she might not be too tired on Friday morning, Owen insisted on her leaving the ball-room at two o'clock, and their last words, as he left her on her doorstep, were that she would go to Dulwich before she went to rehearsal. But in the warmth of her bed, not occupied long enough to restore to the body the strength of which a ball-room had robbed it, her resolution waned, and her brain, weak from insufficient sleep, shrank from the prospect of a long drive and a face of stone at the end of it. She sat moodily sipping her chocolate and brioche.

"You were at the opera last night, Merat. Was Mademoiselle Helbrun a success?"

"No, mademoiselle, I'm afraid not."

"Ah!" Evelyn put down her cup and looked at her maid. "I'm sorry, but I thought she wouldn't succeed in London. She was coldly received, was she?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"I'm sorry, for she's a true artist."

"She has not the passion of mademoiselle."

A little look of pleasure lit up Evelyn's face.

"She is a charming singer. I can't think how she could have failed. Did you hear any reason given?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, I met Mr. Ulick Dean."

"What did he say? He'd know."

"He said that Mademoiselle Helbrun's was the true reading of the part. But 'Carmen' had lately been turned into a femme de la balle, and, of course, since the public had tasted realism it wanted more. I thought Mademoiselle Helbrun rather cold. But then I'm one of the public. Mademoiselle has not yet told me what I am to tell the coachman."

"You do not listen to me, Merat," Evelyn answered in a sudden access of ill humour. "Instead of accepting the answer I choose to give, you stop there in the intention of obtaining the answer which seems to you the most suitable. I told you to tell the coachman that he was to get a map and acquaint himself with the way to Dulwich."

And to bring the interview to a close, she told Merat to take away the chocolate tray, and took up one of the scores which lay on a small table by the bedside—"Tannhaeuser" and "Tristan and Isolde." It would bore her to look at Elizabeth again; she knew it all. She chose Tristan instead, and began reading the second act at the place where Isolde, ignoring Brangaene's advice, signals to Tristan with the handkerchief. She glanced down the lines, hearing the motive on the 'cellos, then, in precipitated rhythm, taken up by the violins. When the emotion has reached breaking point, Tristan rushes into Isolde's arms, and the frantic happiness of the lovers is depicted in short, hurried phrases. The score slipped from her hands and her thoughts ran in reminiscence of a similar scene which she had endured in Venice nearly four years ago. She had not seen Owen for two months, and was expecting him every hour. The old walls of the palace, the black and watchful pictures, the watery odours and echoes from the canal had frightened and exhausted her. The persecution of passion in her brain and the fever of passion afloat in her blood waxed, and the minutes became each a separate torture. There was only one lamp. She had watched it, fearing every moment lest it should go out.... She had cast a frightened glance round the room, and it was the spectre of life that her exalted imagination saw, and her natural eyes a strange ascension of the moon. The moon rose out of a sullen sky, and its reflection trailed down the lagoon. Hardly any stars were visible, and everything was extraordinarily still. The houses leaned heavily forward and Evelyn feared she might go mad, and it was through this phantom world of lagoon and autumn mist that a gondola glided. This time her heart told her with a loud cry that he had come, and she had stood in the shadowy room waiting for him, her brain on fire. The emotion of that night came to her at will, and lying in her warm bed she considered the meeting of Tristan and Isolde in the garden, and the duet on the bank of sultry flowers. Like Tristan and Isolde, she and Owen had struggled to find expression for their emotion, but, not having music, it had lain cramped up in their hearts, and their kisses were vain to express it. She found it in these swift irregularities of rhythm, replying to every change of motion, and every change of key cried back some pang of the heart.

This scene in the second act was certainly one of the most difficult—at least to her—and the one in which she most despaired of excelling. It suddenly occurred to her that she might study it with Ulick Dean. She had met him at rehearsal, and had been much interested in him. He had sent her six melodies—strange, old-world rhythms, recalling in a way the Gregorian she used to read in childhood in the missals, yet modulated as unintermittently as Wagner; the same chromatic scale and yet a haunting of the antique rhythm in the melody. Ulick knew her father; he had said, "Mr. Innes is my greatest friend." He loved her father, she could see that, but she had not dared to question him. Talking to Owen was like the sunshine—the earth and only the earth was visible—whereas talking to Ulick was like the twilight through which the stars were shining. Dreams were to him the true realities; externals he accepted as other people accepted dreams—with diffidence. Evelyn laughed, much amused by herself and Ulick, and she laughed as she thought of his fixed and averted look as he related the tales of bards and warriors. Every now and then his dark eyes would light up with gleams of sunny humour; he probably believed that the legends contained certain eternal truths, and these he was shaping into operas. He was the most interesting young man she had met this long while.

He had been about to tell her why he had recanted his Wagnerian faith when they had been interrupted by Owen.... She could conceive nothing more interesting than the recantation by a man of genius of the ideas that had first inspired him. His opera had been accepted, and would be produced if she undertook the principal part. Why should she not? They could both help each other. Truly, he was the person with whom she could study Isolde, and she imagined the flood of new light he would throw upon it. Her head drowsed on the pillow, and she dreamed the wonderful things he would tell her. But as she drowsed she thought of the article he had written about her Margaret, and it was the desire to read it again that awoke her. Stretching out her hand, she took it from the table at her bedside and began reading. He liked the dull green dress she wore in the first act; and the long braids of golden hair which he admired were her own. He had mentioned them and the dark velvet cape, which he could not remember whether she wore or carried. As a matter of fact, she carried it on her arm. His forgetfulness on this point seemed to her charming, and she smiled with pleasure. He said that she made good use of the cape in the next act, and she was glad that he had perceived that.

Like every other Margaret, her prayer-book was in her hand when she first met Faust; but she dropped it as she saw him, and while she shyly and sweetly sang that she was neither a lady nor a beauty, she stooped and with some embarrassment picked up the book. She passed on, and did not stop to utter a mechanical cry when she saw Mephistopheles, and then run away. She hesitated a moment; Mephistopheles was not in sight, but Faust was just behind her, and over the face of Margaret flashed the thought, "What a charming—what a lovely young man! I think I'll stop a little longer, and possibly he'll say something more. But no—after all—perhaps I'd better not," and, with a little sigh of regret, she turned and went, at first quietly and then more quickly, as though fearful of being tempted to change her mind.

In the garden scene, she sang the first bars of the music absent-mindedly, dusting and folding her little cape, stopping when it was only half folded to stand forgetful a moment, her eyes far off, gazing back into the preceding act. Awaking with a little start, she went to her spinning-wheel, and, with her back to the audience, arranged the spindle and the flax. Then stopping in her work and standing in thought, she half hummed, half sang the song "Le Roi de Thule." Not till she had nearly finished did she sit down and spin, and then only for a moment, as though too restless and disturbed for work that afternoon.

Evelyn was glad that Ulick had remarked that the jewels were not "the ropes of pearls we are accustomed to, but strange, mediaeval jewels, long, heavy earrings and girdles and broad bracelets." Owen had given her these. She remembered how she had put them on, just as Ulick said, with the joy of a child and the musical glee of a bird. "She laughed out the jewel song," he said, "with real laughter, returning lightly across the stage;" and he said that they had "wondered what was this lovely music which they had never heard before!" And when she placed the jewels back, she did so lingeringly, regretfully, slowly, one by one, even forgetting the earrings, perhaps purposely, till just before she entered the house.

"In the duet with Faust," he said, "we were drawn by that lovely voice as in a silken net, and life had for us but one meaning—the rapture of love."

"Has it got any other meaning?" Evelyn paused a moment to think. She was afraid that it had long ceased to have any other meaning for her. But love did not seem to play a large part in Ulick's life. Yet that last sentence—to write like that he must feel like that. She wondered, and then continued reading his article.

She was glad that he had noticed that when she fainted at the sight of Mephistopheles, she slowly revived as the curtain was falling and pointed to the place where he had been, seeing him again in her over-wrought brain. This she did think was a good idea, and, as he said, "seemed to accomplish something."

He thought her idea for her entrance in the following act exceedingly well imagined, for, instead of coming on neatly dressed and smiling like the other Margarets, she came down the steps of the church with her dress and hair disordered, in the arms of two women, walking with difficulty, only half recovered from her fainting fit. "It is by ideas like this," he said, "that the singer carried forward the story, and made it seem like a real scene that was happening before our eyes. And after her brother had cursed Margaret, when he falls back dead, Miss Innes retreats, getting away from the body, half mad, half afraid. She did not rush immediately to him, as has been the operatic custom, kneel down, and, with one arm leaning heavily on Valentine's stomach, look up in the flies. Miss Innes, after backing far away from him, slowly returned, as if impelled to do so against her will, and, standing over the body, looked at it with curiosity, repulsion, terror; and then she burst into a whispered laugh, which communicated a feeling of real horror to the audience.

"In the last act, madness was tangled in her hair, and in her wide-open eyes were read the workings of her insane brain, and her every movement expressed the pathos of madness; her lovely voice told its sad tale without losing any of its sweetness and beauty. The pathos of the little souvenir phrases was almost unbearable, and the tragic power of the finish was extraordinary in a voice of such rare distinction and fluid utterance. Her singing and acting went hand in hand, twin sisters, equal and indivisible, and when the great moment in the trio came, she stepped forward and with an inspired intensity lifted her quivering hands above her head in a sort of mad ecstasy, and sang out the note clear and true, yet throbbing with emotion."

The paper slid from Evelyn's hand. She could see from Ulick's description of her acting that she had acted very well; if she had not, he could not have written like that. But her acting only seemed extraordinary when she read about it. It was all so natural to her. She simply went on the stage, and once she was on the stage she could not do otherwise. She could not tell why she did things. Her acting was so much a part of herself that she could not think of it as an art at all; it was merely a medium through which she was able to re-live past phases of her life, or to exhibit her present life in a more intense and concentrated form. The dropping of the book was quite true; she had dropped a piece of music when she first saw Owen, and the omission of the scream was natural to her. She felt sure that she would not have seen Mephistopheles just then; she would have been too busy thinking of the young man. But she thought that she might take a little credit for her entrance in the third act. Somehow her predecessors had not seen that it was absurd to come smiling and tripping out of church, where she had seen Mephistopheles. She read the lines describing her power to depict madness. But even in the mad scenes she was not conscious of having invented anything. She had had sensations of madness—she supposed everyone had—and she threw herself into those sensations, intensifying them, giving them more prominence on the stage than they had had in her own personal life.

Many had thought her a greater actress than a singer; and she had been advised to dispense with her voice and challenge a verdict on her speaking voice in one of Shakespeare's plays. Owen would have liked her to risk the adventure, but she dared not. It would seem a wanton insult to her voice. She had imagined that it might leave her as an offended spirit might leave its local habitation. Her Margaret had been accepted in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she sang it as well as her mother, he had said, "Mademoiselle, the singers of my day were as exquisite flutes, and the singers of your day give emotions that no flute could give me," and when she had told him that she was going to be so bold as to attempt Norma, he had raised his eyebrows a little and said, "Mademoiselle will sing it according to the fashion of to-day; we cannot compare the present with the past." Ah! Ce vieux marquis etait tres fin. And her father would think the same; never would he admit that she could sing like her mother. But Ulick had said—and no doubt he had already read Ulick's article—that she had rescued the opera from the grave into which it was gliding. None of them liked it for itself. Her father spoke indulgently about it because her mother had sung it. Ulick praised it because he was tired of hearing Wagner praised, and she liked it because her first success had been made in it.

These morning hours, how delicious they were! to roll over in one's silk nightgown, to feel it tighten round one's limbs and to think how easily success had come. Madame Savelli had taught her eight operas in ten months, and she had sung Margaret in Brussels—a very thin performance, no doubt, but she had always been a success. Ulick would not have thought much of her first Margaret. Almost all the points he admired she had since added. She had learnt the art of being herself on the stage. That was all she had learnt, and she very much doubted if there was anything else to learn. If Nature gives one a personality worth exhibiting, the art of acting is to get as much of one's personality into the part as possible. That was the A B C and the X Y Z of the art of acting. She had always found that when she was acting herself, she was acting something that had not been acted before. She did not compare her Margaret with her Elizabeth. With Margaret she was back in the schoolroom. Still she thought that Ulick was right; she had got a new thrill out of it. Her Margaret was unpublished, but her Elizabeth was three times as real. There was no comparison; not even in Isolde could she be more true to herself. Her Elizabeth was a side of her life that now only existed on the stage. Brunnhilde was her best part, for into it she poured all her joy of life, all her love of the blue sky with great white clouds floating, all her enthusiasm for life and for the hero who came to awaken her to life and to love. In Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all the humanity she represented—and she thought she was a fairly human person—was on the stage. But Elsa? That was the one part she was dissatisfied with. There were people who liked her Elsa. Oh, her Elsa had been greatly praised. Perhaps she was mistaken, but at the bottom of her heart she could not but feel that her Elsa was a failure. The truth was that she had never understood the story. It began beautifully, the beginning was wonderful—the maiden whom everyone was persecuting, who would be put to death if some knight did not come to her aid. She could sing the dream—that she understood. Then the silver-clad knight who comes from afar, down the winding river, past thorpe and town, to release her from those who were plotting against her. But afterwards? This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name. What did it mean? And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber—what did it mean? It was beautiful music—but what did it mean? Could anyone tell her? She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell her.

She knew very well the meaning of the duet, when Siegfried adventures through the fire-surrounded mountain and wakes Brunnhilde with a kiss. That duet meant the joy of life, the rapture of awakening to the adventure of life, the delight of the swirling current of ephemeral things. And the duet that she was going to sing; she knew what that meant too. It meant the desire to possess. Desire finding a barrier to complete possession in the flesh would break off the fleshly lease, and enter the great darkness where alone was union and rest.

But she could not discover the idea in the "Lohengrin" duet? Senta she understood, and she thought she understood Kundry. She had not yet begun to study the part. But Elsa? Suddenly the thought that, if she was going to Dulwich, she must get up, struck her like a spur, and she sprang out of bed, and laying her finger on the electric bell she kept the button pressed till Merat arrived breathless.

"Merat, I shall get up at once; prepare my bath, and tell the coachman I shall be ready to start in twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes? Mademoiselle is joking."

"No, I am not ... in twenty minutes—half-an-hour at the most."

"It would be impossible for me to dress you in less than three-quarters of an hour."

"I shall be dressed in half-an-hour. Go and tell the coachman at once; I shall have had my bath when you return."

Her dressing was accomplished amid curt phrases. "It doesn't matter, that will do.... I can't afford to waste time.... Come, Merat, try to get on with my hair."

And while Merat buttoned her boots, she buttoned her gloves. She wore a grey, tailor-made dress and a blue veil tied round a black hat with ostrich feathers. Escaping from her maid's hands, she ran downstairs. But the dining-room door opened, and Lady Duckle intervened.

"My dear girl, you really cannot go out before you have had something to eat."

"I cannot stay; I'll get something at the theatre."

"Do eat a cutlet, it will not take a moment ... a mouthful of omelette. Think of your voice."

There were engravings after Morland on the walls, and the silver on the breakfast-table was Queen Anne—the little round tea urn Owen and Evelyn had picked up the other day in a suburban shop; the horses, whose glittering red hides could be seen through the window, had been bought last Saturday at Tattersall's. Evelyn went to the window to admire them, and Lady Duckle's thoughts turned to the coachman.

"He sent in just now to ask for a map of London. It appears he doesn't know the way, yet, when I took up his references, I was assured that he knew London perfectly."

"Dulwich is very little known; it is at least five miles from here."

"Oh, Dulwich!... you're going there?"

"Yes, I ought to have gone the day after we arrived in London. ... I wanted to; I've been thinking of it all the time, and the longer I put it off the more difficult it will become."

"That is true."

"I thought I would drive there to-day before I went to rehearsal."

"Why choose a day on which you have a rehearsal?"

"Only because I've put it off so often. Something always happens to prevent me. I must see my father."

"Have you written to him?"

"No, but I sent him a paper containing an account of the first night. I thought he might have written to me about it, or he might have come to see me. He must know that I am dying to see him."

"I think it would be better for you to go to see him in the first instance."

Lady Duckle meant Evelyn to understand that it would not be well to risk anything that might bring about a meeting between Sir Owen and Mr. Innes. But she did not dare to be more explicit. Owen had forbidden any discussion of his relations with Evelyn.

"Of course it would be nice for you to see your father. But you should, I think, go to him; surely that is the proper course."

"We've written to each other from time to time, but not lately—not since we went to Greece.... I've neglected my correspondence."

Tears rose to Evelyn's eyes, and Lady Duckle was sorely tempted to lead her into confidences. But Owen's counsels prevailed; she dissembled, saying that she knew how Evelyn loved her father, and how nice it would be for her to see him again after such a long absence.

"I dare say he'll forgive me, but there'll be reproaches. I don't think there's anyone who hates a scene more than I do."

"I haven't lived with you five years without having found out that. But in avoiding a disagreeable scene we are often preparing one more disagreeable."

"That is true.... I think I'll go to Dulwich."

"Shall you have time?... You're not in the first act."

"Dulwich is not six miles from here. We can drive there easily in three-quarters of an hour. And three-quarters of an hour to get back. They won't begin to rehearse the second act before one. It is a little after ten now."

"Then good-bye."

Lady Duckle followed her to the front door and stood for a moment to admire the beauty of the morning. The chestnut horses pawed the ground restlessly, excited by the scent of the lilac which a wilful little breeze carried up from Hamilton Place. Every passing hansom was full of flowered silks, and the pale laburnum gold hung in loose tassels out of quaint garden inlets. The verandahed balconies seemed to hang lower than ever, and they were all hung and burdened with flowers. And of all these eighteenth century houses, Evelyn's was the cosiest, and the elder of the two men, who, from the opposite pavement, stood watching the prima donna stroking the quivering nostrils of her almost thoroughbred chestnuts with her white-gloved hand, could easily imagine her in her pretty drawing-room standing beside a cabinet filled with Worcester and old Battersea china, for he knew Owen's taste and was certain the Louis XVI. marble clock would be well chosen, and he would have bet five-and-twenty-pounds that there were some Watteau and Gainsborough drawings on the walls.

"Owen is doing the thing well. Those horses must have cost four hundred. I know how much the Boucher drawing cost."

"How do you know there is a Boucher drawing?"

"Because we bid against each other for it at Christie's. A woman lying on her stomach, drawn very freely, very simply—quite a large drawing—just the thing for such a room as hers is, amid chintz and eighteenth century inlaid or painted tables."

"I wonder where she is going. Perhaps to see him."

"At ten o'clock in the morning! More likely that she will call at her dressmaker's on her way to rehearsal. She is to sing Elizabeth to-morrow night." And while discussing her singing, the elder man asked himself if he had ever had a mistress that would compare with her. "She isn't by any means a beautiful woman," he said, "but she's the sort of woman that if one did catch on to it would be for a long while."

The young man pitied Evelyn's misfortune of so elderly an admirer as Owen. It seemed to him impossible that she could like a man who must be over forty, and the thought saddened him that he might never possess so desirable a mistress.

"I wonder of she's faithful to him?"

"Faithful to him, after six years of liaison!"

"But, my dear Frank, we know you don't believe that any woman is straight. How do you know that he is her lover? Very often—"

"My dear Cyril, because you meet her at a ball at Lady Ascott's, and because she has lived with that Lady Duckle—an old thing who used to present the daughters of ironmongers at Court for a consideration—above all, because you want her yourself, you are ready to believe anything. I never did meet anyone who could deceive himself with the same ease. Besides, I know all about her. It's quite an extraordinary story."

"How did he pick her up?"

"I'll tell you presently. She's got into her carriage; we shall be able to see if she rouges as she passes."

Evelyn had noticed the men as she stood trying to explain as much of the way as she could to her somewhat obtuse coachman. Her bow was gracious as the chestnuts swept the light carriage by them; the young man pleased her fancy for the moment, and she tried to recall the few words they had exchanged as she left the ball. The elder man was a friend of Owen's. But his face was suddenly blotted from her mind. For if her father were to refuse to see her, if he were to cast her off for good and all, what would she do? Her life would be unendurable; she would go mad, mad as Margaret. But the picture did not frighten her, she knew it was fictitious; and looking into her soul for the truth, she saw the trees in the Green Park and the chimney pots of Walsingham House, and she realised that the nearest future is enveloped in obscurity. She had always dreaded the journey to London; she had been warned against London, and ever since she had consented to come she had been ill at ease and nervous—of what she did not know—of someone behind her, of someone lurking round her. She argued that she would not have had those feelings if there was not a reason. When she had them, something always happened to her, and nothing could convince her that London was not the turning-point in her fortune. The carriage seemed to be going very fast; they were already in Victoria Street; she cried to the coachman not to drive so fast, he answered that he must drive at that pace if he was to get there by eleven.... Surely her father would not refuse to see her. He could not, he would not take her by the shoulders and turn her out of the house—the house she had known all her life. Oh, good heavens! if he did, what would happen afterwards? She could not go back to Owen and sing operas at Covent Garden, and her soul wailed like a child and a deadly terror of her father came upon her. It might be her destiny never to speak to him again! That fate had been the fate of other women. Why should it not be hers? He might not send for her when he was dying, and if she were dying he might not come to her; and after death, would she see him? Would they then be reconciled? If she did not see her father in this world, she would never see him, for she had promised Owen to believe in oblivion, and she thought she did believe in nothing; but she felt now that she must say her prayers, she must pray that her father might forgive her. It might be absurd, but she felt that a prayer would ease her mind. It was dreadfully hypocritical to pray to a God one didn't believe in. There was no sense in it, nor was there much sense in much else one did.... She had promised Owen not to pray, and it was a sort of blasphemy to say prayers and lead a life of sin. She did not like to break her promise to Owen. She must make up her mind.... Her father might be at St. Joseph's! and it was with a sense of refreshing delight that she called the coachman and gave the order. The chestnuts were prancing like greyhounds amid heavy drays and clumsy, bear-like horses; the coachman was trying to hold them in and to understand the policeman, who shouted the way to him from the edge of the pavement.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

But she ought not to go to St. Joseph's. She had promised Owen to avoid churches, priests—all that reminded her of religion. He had begged that until she was firm in her agnosticism she should not expose herself to influences which could but result in mental distress, and without any practical issue unless to separate them. She had escaped once; next time he might find it more difficult to win her back. How kind he was. He had not said a word about his own suffering.

It had happened nearly three years ago in Florence, and an accident had brought it all about. One afternoon she was walking in the streets; she could still see the deep cornices showing distinct against the sky; she was admiring them when suddenly a church appeared; she could not tell how it was, but she had been propelled to enter.... A feeling which had arisen out of her heart, a sort of yearning—that was it. The church was almost empty; how restful it had seemed that afternoon, the rough plastered walls and the two figures of the nuns absorbed in prayer. Her heart had begun to ache, and her daily life with its riches and glories had seemed to concern her no longer. It was as if the light had changed, and she had become suddenly aware of her real self. A tall cross stood oddly placed between the arches; she had not seen it at first, but as her eyes rested upon it she had been drawn into wistful communion with her dying Redeemer. And all that had seemed false suddenly became true, and she had left the church overcome with remorse. That night her door was closed to Owen; she had pleaded indisposition, unable for some shame to speak the truth. On the next day and the day after the desire of forgiveness had sent her to the church and then to the priest, but the priest had refused her absolution till she separated from her lover. She had felt that she must obey. She had written a note—she could not think of it now—so cruel did it seem, yet at the time it had seemed quite natural. It was not until the next day, and the day after was worse still, that she began to plumb the depths of her own unhappiness; every day it seemed to grow deeper. She could not keep him out of her mind. She used to sit and try to do needlework in the hotel sitting-room. But how often had she had to put it down and to walk to the window to hide her tears? As the time drew near for her to go to the theatre, she had to vow not to cry again till she got home. He was always in his box—once she had nearly broken down, and, pitying her, he came no more. But not to see him at all was worse than the pain of seeing him. That empty box! And all through the night she thought of him in his hotel, only a street or two distant. She could not go through it again, nor could she think what would have happened if they had not met. Something had prompted her to go out one afternoon; she was weak with weeping and sick with love, and, feeling that there are burdens beyond our strength, she had walked with her eyes steadily fixed before her ... and somehow she was not surprised when she saw him coming towards her. He joined her quite naturally, as if by appointment, and they had walked on, instinctively finding their way out of the crowd. They had walked on and on, now and then exchanging remarks, waiting for a full explanation, wondering what form it would take. Cypresses and campanili defined themselves in the landscape as the evening advanced. Further on the country flattened out; there were urban gardens and dusty little vineyards. They had sat on a bench; above them was a statue of the Virgin; she remembered noticing it; it reminded her of her scapular, but nothing had mattered to her then but Owen. He said—

"Well Evelyn, when is all this nonsense going to cease?"

"I don't know, Owen; I'm very unhappy."

The sense of reconciliation which overtook her was too delicious to be resisted, and she remembered how all the way home she had longed for the moment when she would throw herself into his arms. He had not reproved her nor reproached her; he had merely forgiven her the pain she had caused him. There were sounds of children's voices in the air and a glow of light upon the roofs. Their talk had been gentle and philosophic; she had listened eagerly, and had promised to shun influences which made her uselessly unhappy. And he had promised her that in time to come she would surely succeed in freeing herself from the tentacles of this church, and that the day would come when she would watch the Mass as she would some childish sport. "Though," he added, smiling, "it is doubtful if anyone can see his own rocking-horse without experiencing a desire to mount it." Nearly three years had passed since that time in Florence, and she was now going to put the strength of her agnosticism to the test.

"They have not built a new entrance," she remarked to herself, as the coachman reined up the chestnuts before the meagre steps. "But alterations are being made," she thought, catching sight of some scaffolding. As she stepped out of her carriage she remembered that her dress and horses could not fail to suggest Owen's money to her father. She paused, and then hoped he would remember that she was getting three hundred pounds a week, and could pay for her carriage and gowns herself. And, smiling at the idea of dressing herself in a humble frock suitable for reconciliation, she entered the church hurriedly. She did not care to meet him in open daylight, in the presence of her servants. The church would be a better place. He could not say much to her in church, and she thought she would like to meet him suddenly face to face; then there would be no time for explanations, and he could not refuse to speak to her. Looking round she saw that Mass was in progress at one of the side altars. The acolyte had just changed the book from the left to the right, and the congregation of about a dozen had risen for the reading of the Gospel. She knew that her father was not among them. She must have known all the while that he was not in church. If he were at St. Joseph's, he would be in the practising room. She might go round and ask for him ... and run the risk of meeting one of the priests! They were men of tact, and would refrain from unpleasant allusions. But they knew she was on the stage, that she had not been back since she had left home; they could not but suspect; however they might speak, she could not avoid reading meanings, which very likely were not intended, into their words.... And she would see the practising room full of faces, and her father, already angry at the interruption, opening the door to her. It would be worse than meeting him in the street. No, she would not seek him in the practising room—then where—Dulwich? Perhaps, but not to-day. She would wait in the church and see if the Elevation compelled her to bow her head.

And in this intention she took a seat in full view of the altar where the priest was saying Mass. Every shape and every colour of this church, its slightest characteristics, brought back an impression of long ago; the very wording of her childish thoughts was suddenly remembered; and she felt, whether she believed or disbelieved, that it was pleasant to kneel where she knelt when she was a little girl. It was touching to see the poor folk pray. The poor Irish and Italians—especially the Irish—how simple they were; it was all real to them, however false it may have become to her. Her eyes wandered among the little congregation; only one she recognised—the strangely thin and crooked lady who, as far back as she could remember, used to walk up the aisle, her hands crossed in front of her like a wooden doll's. She had not altered at all; she wore the same battered black bonnet. This lonely lady had always been a subject of curiosity to Evelyn. She remembered how she used to invent houses for her to live in and suitable friends and evenings at home. The day that Owen came to St. Joseph's before he went away on his yacht to the Mediterranean, he had put his hat on this lady's chair, and she had had to ask him to remove it. How frightened she had looked, and he not too well pleased at having to sit beside her. That was six years ago, and Evelyn thought how much had happened to her in that time—a great deal to her and very little to that poor woman in the black bonnet. She must have some little income on which she lived in a room with wax fruit in the window. Every morning and evening she was at St. Joseph's. The church was her one distraction; it was her theatre, the theatre certainly of all her thoughts.