"I came at once, the moment I got your letter. I should have waited, but I was lunching with Lady Merrington. Such terribly boring people were there. It was all I could do to prevent myself from rushing out of the room. But, Evelyn, what are you determined to tell me? I thought we parted good friends yesterday. You have been thinking it over.... You're going to send me away." He sat beside her, he held his hat in both hands, and looked perplexed and worried. "But, Evelyn"—she sat like a figure of stone, there was no colour in her cheeks nor any expression in her eyes or mouth—"Evelyn, I am afraid you are ill, you are pale as a ghost."

"I did not sleep last night, nor the night before."

"Two nights of insomnia are enough to break anyone up. I am very sorry, Evelyn, dear—you ought to go away." Her silence perplexed him, and he said, "Evelyn, I have come to ask you to be my wife. Don't keep me in suspense. Will you give up the stage and be my wife? Why don't you answer? Oh, Evelyn, is it—are you married?"

"No, I am not married, Owen. I don't suppose I ever shall be. If you had wished to marry me—"

"I know all that, that if I wanted to marry you I ought to have done so long ago. But you said you were determined to tell me something—what is it?" The expression of her face did not change; her lips moved a little, she cast down her eyes, and said, "I've got another lover."

He felt that he ought to get very angry, and that to do so was in a way expected of him. He thought he had better say something energetic, lest she should think that he did not care for her. But he was so overcome by the thought of his escape—it was now no longer possible for her to send him away—that he could think of nothing. It even seemed to him that everything was happening for the best, for he did not doubt that she would soon tire, if she were not tired already, of this musician, and then he would easily regain his old influence over her. Even if she did marry this musician, she'd get tired of him, and then who knows —anything was better than that she should go over to that infernal priest. While rejoicing in the defeat of his hated rival, he was anxious that Evelyn should not perceive what was passing in his mind, and, afraid to betray himself, he said nothing, leaving her to conjecture what she pleased from his silence.

"I don't intend to defend my conduct; it is indefensible.... But, Owen, I want you to believe that I did not lie to you. Ulick was not my lover when I went to see you that evening in Berkeley Square."

It was necessary to say something, and, feeling that any unguarded word would jeopardise his chances, he said—

"I think I told you that night that you liked Ulick Dean. I can quite understand it; he is a nice fellow enough. Are you going to marry him?"

"No, I am not in love with him—I never was. I liked him merely."

"I can understand; all those hours you spent with him studying Isolde."

"Yes, it was that music, it gets on one's nerves.... But, Owen, there is no excuse."

"We'll think no more about it, Evelyn. I am glad you do not love him. My greatest fear was to lose you altogether."

She was touched by his kindness, as he expected she would be, and he sat looking at her, keeping as well as he could all expression from his face. He thought that he had got over the greatest difficulty, and he congratulated himself on his cleverness. The question now was, what was the next move?

"You are not looking very well, Evelyn. You don't sleep—you want a change. The Medusa is at Cowes; what do you say for a sail?"

"Owen, dear, I cannot go with you. If I did, you know how it would end, I being what I am, and you being what you are. There would be no sense in my going yachting unless I went as your mistress, and I cannot do that."

"You love that fellow Ulick Dean too much."

"I don't love him at all.... Owen, you will never understand."

"Understand!" he cried, starting to his feet, "this is madness, Evelyn. I see! I suppose you think it wrong to have two lovers at the same time. Grace has come to you through sin. You are going to get rid of both of us."

Evelyn sat quite still as if hypnotised. She was very sorry for him, but for no single moment did she think she would yield.

Suddenly he asked her why he should be the one to be sent away, and he pleaded the rights of old friendship, going even so far as to suggest that even if she liked Ulick better she should not refuse to see him sometimes.

"I have no right to seem shocked at anything you may say. I told you Ulick was my lover, but I did not say he was going to remain my lover."

"Then what are you going to do? Will that priest get hold of you? I know him—I was at Eton with him. He always was—" and Owen muttered something under his breath. "Surely, Evelyn, you are not thinking of going to confession. After all my teaching has it come to this? My God!" he said, as he walked up the room, "I'd sooner Ulick got you than that damned hypocritical fool. You are much too good for God," he said, turning suddenly and looking at her, remarking at that moment the pretty oval of her face, the arched eyebrows, the clear, nervous eyes. "You'll be wasted on religion."

"From your point of view, I suppose I shall be."

They talked on and on, saying what they had said many times before. Sometimes Evelyn seemed to follow his arguments, and thinking that he was convincing her, he would break off suddenly. "Well, will you come for a cruise with me in the Medusa? I'll ask all your friends—we'll have such a pleasant time."

"No, Owen, no, it's impossible, you don't understand. I don't blame you—you never will understand."

And they looked at each other like wanderers standing on the straits dividing two worlds. The hands of the clock pointed to five o'clock. The servants had taken the tea-service away. Owen had urged Evelyn not to abandon the stage; he had urged the cause of Art; he had urged that her voice was her natural vocation; he had spoken of their love, and of the happiness they had found in each other—the conversation had drifted from an argument concerning the authenticity of the Gospels to a lake where they had spent a season five years ago. She saw again the reedy reaches and the steep mountain shores. They had been there in the month of September, and the leaves of the vine were drooping, and the grapes ready for gathering. They had been sweethearts only a little while, and the drives about the lake was one of his happiest memories.

"Evelyn, you cannot mean that you will never see me again?"

His eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head aside so that she might not see them.

"Life is very difficult, Owen; try not to make it more difficult."

"Evelyn, I had hoped that our friendship would have continued to the end. I never cared for any other woman, and when you are my age and look back, you will find that there is one, I don't say I shall be the one, who—" His voice trembled, and he passed his hand across his eyes.

"It's very sad, Owen, and life is very difficult.... There is this consolation for you, that I am not sending you away on account of anyone else. Ulick must go too."

"That does not make it any better for me. By God, I'd sooner that he got you than that infernal religion. Evelyn, Evelyn, it is impossible that an idea, a mere idea, should take you from me. It is inhuman, unnatural, I can't realise it!"

"Owen, you must go now."

"Evelyn, I don't understand. It is just as if you told me you were tallow, and would melt if there was a fire lighted. But never mind, I'll accept your ideas—I'll accept anything. Let us be married to-morrow."

She was frightened in the depths of her feelings, and seemed to lose all control of her will.

"Owen, I cannot marry you. Why do you ask me? You know it is now more than ever impossible."

His face changed expression, but he was urged forward by an irresistible force that seemed to rise up from the bottom of his being and blind his eyes.

"You don't love him, it was only a caprice; we'll think no more about it."

She sought the truth in her soul, but it seemed to elude her. She was like a blind person in a vague, unknown space, and not being able to discover the reason why she refused him, she insisted that Ulick was the reason.

"Are you going to marry him?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Don't you wish to? He is your father's friend."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Destiny, I suppose."

The question was too profound for discussion, and they sat silent for a long while. A chance remark turned their talk upon Balzac, and Owen spoke about Le Lys dans la Vallee, and she asked him if he remembered the day he had first spoken to her about Balzac.

"It was the day you took me to the races, our first week in Paris."

"And a few days afterwards I took you to Madame Savelli's. She told you that you had the most beautiful voice she had ever heard. You could not speak; you were so excited that I was obliged to send you off for a drive in the Bois. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember.... You were always very good to me."

They talked on and on, conscious of the hands of the clock moving on towards their divided lives. When it struck seven, she said he must go, but he begged to be allowed to stay till a quarter past, and in this last period he urged that their separation should not be final. He pleaded that a time should be set on his alienation, and ended by extracting from her a sort of half promise that she would allow him to come and see her in three months. But he and she knew that they would never meet again, and the sad thought floated up into their eyes as they said good-bye. She went to the window, wondering if he would stay a moment to look back. He stood on the edge of the pavement, and she watched him unmoved. She was thinking of Monsignor, and of how he would approve of her conduct. He would tell her that what she liked and disliked was no longer the question. Owen still stood on the kerb, but she did not even see him. Her eyes looked into the sunset, and she was thrilled with a mysterious joy, a joy that came from the heart, not from passions, and it was exquisitely subtle as the light that faded in the remote west.



CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

He walked up Park Lane, staring now and then at the quaint balconies from a mere habit of admiration. But all were indifferent to him, even the one supported by the four Empire figures. It did not seem that anything in the world could interest him again, and he wondered how he would get through the years that remained to him to live. He was tired of hunting and shooting; he had seen everything there was to be seen; he had been round the world twice; it did not seem to him that he would ever care for another woman, and he reflected with pride that he had been faithful to Evelyn for six years. "But I shall never see her again," his heart wailed; "in three months she'll be a different woman; she won't want to see me, she'll find some excuse. That infernal priest will refuse his absolution if—" Owen stopped suddenly. Far away a little pink cloud dissolved mysteriously. "In another second," he thought, "it will be no more." In the Green Park the trees rocked in the soft autumn air, and he noticed that now and then a leaf broke from its twig, fluttered across the path, and fell by the iron railings.

"Well, Asher, how is it that you are in town at this time of year?"

It was a club acquaintance, one of the ordinary conventional men that Owen met by the dozen in every one of his clubs, a man whose next question would surely be, "How are your two-year-olds?"

"I should like to hear that they had all broken their legs," Owen answered through his teeth, and the colour mounted in his cheeks.

"Asher always was mad ... now he seems madder than ever. What did he mean by saying he wished his two-year-olds had all broken their legs?"

Owen lingered on the kerb, inveighing against the stupidity of his set. He had thought of dining at the Turf Club, but after this irritating incident he felt that he dared not risk it; if anyone were to speak to him again of his two-year-olds, he felt he would not be able to control himself. Suddenly he thought of a friend. He must speak to someone.... He need mention no names. He put up his stick and stopped a hansom. A few minutes took him to Harding's rooms.

The unexpectedness of the visit, and the manner in which Owen strode about the room, trying to talk of the things that he generally talked about, while clearly thinking of something quite different, struck Harding as unusual, and a suspicion of the truth had just begun to dawn upon him, when, breaking off suddenly, Owen said—

"Swear you'll never speak of what I am going to say—and don't ask for names."

"I'll tell no one," said Harding, "and the name does not interest me."

"It's this: a woman whom I have known many years—a friendship that I thought would go on to the end of the chapter—told me to-day that it was all finished, that she never wanted to see me again."

"A friendship! Were you her lover?"

"What does it matter? Suffice it to say that she was my dearest friend, and now I have lost her. She has been taken from me," he said, throwing his arms into the air. It was a superb gesture of despair, and Harding could not help smiling.

"So Evelyn has left him. I wonder for whom?" Then, with as much sympathy as he could call into his voice, he asked if the lady had given any reason for this sudden dismissal.

"Only that she thinks it wrong; we've been discussing it all the afternoon. It has made me quite ill;" and he dropped into a chair.

Harding knew perfectly well of whom they were speaking, and Owen knew that he knew, but it seemed more decorous to refrain from mentioning names, and Evelyn's soul was discussed as if it were an abstract quantity, and all indication of the individual incarnation was avoided. Owen admitted that, notwithstanding many seeming contradictory appearances, Evelyn had always thought it wrong to live with him, and yet, notwithstanding her being very fond of him, she had never shown any eagerness to be married. "Of course it is very wrong," she would say in her own enchanting way, "but a lover is very exciting, and a husband always seems dull. I don't think you'd be half as nice as a husband as you are as a lover." The recital of the Florence episode interested Harding, but it was the opposition of the priest and the musician that made the story from his point of view one of the most fascinating he had ever heard in his life.

They dined together in an old-fashioned club, in a room lighted by wax candles in silver candlesticks. Tall mirrors in gold frames reflected the black mahogany furniture. In answer to Owen, who lamented that Evelyn was sacrificing everything for an idea, Harding spoke, and with his usual conscious exaltation, of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish Inquisition, and then Robespierre seemed to him the most striking example of what men will do for an idea. He mentioned a portrait by Greuze in which Robespierre appears as a beautiful young man. "Such a face," he said, "as we might imagine for a lover or a poet, a sort of Lucien de Rubempre, but in his brain there was a cell containing the pedantic idea, and for this idea he cut off a thousand heads, and would have cut off a million. The world must conform to his idea, or it was a lost world."

Towards the end of dinner, the head waiter interrupted their conversation. He lingered about the table, anxious to hear something of Lord Ascott's two-year-olds; but, in the smoking-room over their coffee, they returned to the more vital question—the sentimental affections. They were agreed that the pleasure of love is in loving, not in being loved, and their reasons were incontrovertible.

"It is the letters," said Harding, "that we write at three in the morning to tell her how enchanting she was; it is the flowers we send, the words of love that we speak in her ear, that are our undoing. So long as we are indifferent, they love us."

"Quite true. At first I did not care for her as much as she did for me, and I noticed that as soon as I began to fall in love—"

"To aspire, to suffer. Maybe there is no deep pleasure in contentment. In casting you out she has given you a more intense life."

Owen did not seem to understand. His eye wandered, then returning to Harding, he said—

"We cannot worship and be worshipped; is that what you mean? If so, I agree with you. But I'd sooner lose her as I have done than not have told her that I loved her.... There never was anyone like her. Sympathy, understanding, appreciation and enthusiasm! it was like living in a dream. Good God! to think that that priest should have got her; that, after all my teaching, she should think it wrong to have a lover! I don't know if you know of whom we are speaking. If you suspect, I can't help it, but don't ask me. I shouldn't speak of her at all; it is wrong to speak of her, even though I don't mention her name, but it is impossible to help it. If you are proud of a woman you must speak of her—and I was so proud of her. It is very easy to be discreet when you are ashamed of them," he added, with a laugh. "When I had nothing to do, I used to sit down and think of her, and I used to say to myself that if I were the king of the whole world I could not get anything better. But it is all over now."

"Well, you've had six years, the very prime of her life."

"That's true; you're very sympathetic, Harding. Have another cigarette. I was faithful to her for six years—you can't understand that, but it is quite true, and I had plenty of chances, but, when I came to think of it, it always seemed that I liked her the best."

At the same moment Evelyn stood on her balcony, watching the evening. The park was breathless, and the sky rose high and pale, and calm as marble. But the houses seemed to speak unutterable things, and she closed the window and stood looking across the room. Then walking towards the sofa as if she were going to sit down, she flung herself upon it and buried her face among the cushions. She lay there weeping, and when she raised her face she dashed the tears from her streaming cheeks, but this pause was only the prelude to another passionate outbreak, and she wept again, finding in tears fatigue, and in fatigue relief. She sobbed until she could sob no more, and so tired was she that she no longer cared what happened; very tired, and her head heavy, she went upstairs, eager for sleep. And closing her eyes she felt a delicious numbing of sense, a dissolution of her being into darkness....

But in her waking there was a consciousness, a foreboding of a nameless dread, of a heavy weight upon her, and when the foreboding in her ears grew louder, she seemed to know that an irreparable calamity had happened, and trying to fathom it, she saw the wall-paper, and it told her she was in her own room. She seemed to be trying to read something on it, but what she was trying to read and understand seemed to move away, and her brain laboured in anxious pursuit. Her eyes opened, and she remembered her interview with Owen. She had sent him away, she understood it all now, she had sent Owen away! She had told him that Ulick was her lover, so even if he were to come back it never could be the same as it was. Why had she told him about Ulick? It was bad enough to send him away, but she had degraded his memory of her, and the thought that she had not deceived him, but had told him what he otherwise might never have known, did not console her just then. She lay quite still, face to face with, seeing as it were into the eyes of the Irreparable. Never again would a man hold her in his arms, saying, "Darling, I am very fond of you!" Take love out of her life, and what barrenness, what weariness! After all, she was only seven-and-twenty, and the thought came upon her that she might have waited until she was a little older. The word "never" rang in her ears, and she realised as she had not done before all that a lover meant to her—romance, adventure, the brilliancy and sparkle of life. What was life without the delightful excitement of the chase, the delicious doubts regarding the hidden significance of every look and word, then the rapture of the final abandonment? She tried to think that the life she proposed to relinquish had not brought her happiness, but she could not put back memory of the enchanting days she had spent with her lovers. Oh, the intense hours of anticipation! and the wonderful recollections! rich and red as the heart of a flower! Such rapture seemed to her to be worth the remorse that came after, and the peace of mind that a chaste life would secure, a poor recompense for dreary days and months. She realised the length and the colour of the time—grey week after grey week, blank month after blank month, void year after void year! And she always getting a little older, getting older in a drab, lifeless time, in a lifeless life, a weary life filled with intolerable craving! She had endured it once, a feeling as if she wanted to go mad.... She picked up her letters.

Among the letters she received that morning was one from Ulick. He was still in Paris, and would not be back for another week or ten days. He had been lonely, he had missed her, and looked forward to their meeting. He told her about the opera, the people he had met, and what they had said about his music. But the tender affection of his letter was not to her mind. Why did he not say that he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her on the lips? Knitting her brows, she tried to think that if he had written more passionately she would have taken the train and gone to him. She had sent Owen away on account of scruples of conscience, and a life of chastity extended indefinitely before her. But who was this woman to whom Ulick had shown his music, and who had said that if anything happened to prevent Evelyn Innes from singing the part, she hoped that Ulick would give it to her? Why should she have thought that something would happen to prevent Evelyn Innes from creating Grania? Had Ulick suggested it to her? But how could Ulick know? She tried to think if she had ever told him she was tired of the stage. Perhaps he had consulted the stars and had divined her future. This woman seemed to know that something might happen, and something was happening, there could be no doubt about that.

There was no doubt that she was tired of the stage, but perhaps that was on account of hard work, perhaps she required a rest; in two or three months she might return eagerly to the study of Grania; for the sake of Ulick, she might remain on the stage till she had established the success of his opera. This might be if she and Ulick were not lovers. She had promised Owen that she would not keep him for her lover, but that did not mean that she would not sing his opera. If she didn't, another woman would, some wretched singer who did not understand the music, and it would be a failure. Ulick would hate her; he would believe that her refusal to sing his opera was a vile plan to do him an injury. He did not know what conscience meant—he only understood the legends and the Gods! She laughed, and a moment afterwards was submerged in difficulties. Her conduct would seem more incomprehensible to him than it did to Owen; she did not wish him to hate her, but he would hate her, and to avoid seeing her he would not go to Dowlands, and so she would rob her father of his friend—the friend who had kept him company when she deserted him. There was another alternative. If she liked him well enough to be his mistress, she should like him well enough to be his wife. But knowing that she would not marry him, she took up her other letters and began reading them.

Lady Duckle liked Homburg; everyone was there, and she hoped Evelyn would not be detained in London much longer. The Duke of Berwick had proposed to Miss Beale, and Lady Mersey was always about with young Mr. So-and-So. Evelyn didn't read it all. She lay back thinking, for this letter, about things that interested her no longer, had led her thoughts back to self, and she inquired why in the midst of all her enjoyments she had felt that her real life was elsewhere, why she had always known that sooner or later the hour would come when she would leave the things which she enjoyed so intensely. The idea of departure had never quite died down in her, and she had always known that she would be one day quite a different woman. She had often had glimpses of her future self and of her future life, but the moment she tried to distinguish what was there, the vision faded. Even now she knew that she would not marry Ulick, and this not because she would refuse her father anything, but merely because it was not to be. Her eyes went to the piano, but on the way there she stopped to ask herself a question. Why was she in London at this time of year? She knew why she did not care to go to Homburg—because she was tired of society. But why did she not go to some quiet seaside place where she could enjoy the summer weather? She would like to sit on the beach and hear the sea. Her soul threatened to give back a direct answer, and she dismissed the question.

She paced the empty alley facing the Bayswater Road. No one was there except a nursemaid and a small child, and she and they shared the solitude. She could see the omnibuses passing, and hear the clank of the heavy harness, and seated on one of the seats she drew diagrams on the gravel with her parasol. Owen said there was no meaning in life, that it was no more than an unfortunate accident between two eternal sleeps. But she had never been able to believe that this was so; and if she had sought to disbelieve in God, it was as Monsignor had said, because she wished to lead a sinful life. And if she could not believe in annihilation, there could be no annihilation for her, that was Ulick's theory. The name of her lover brought up the faded Bloomsbury Square, the litter of manuscript and the books on magic! She had tried to believe in readings of the stars. But such vague beliefs had not helped her. In spite of all her efforts, the world was slipping behind her; Owen and Ulick and her stage career seemed very little compared with the certainty within her that she was leading a sinful life, and she was only really certain of that. The omnibuses in the road outside, the railways beyond the town, the ships upon the sea, what were these things to her—or yet the singing of operas? The only thing that really mattered was her conscience.

Then, almost without thinking at all, in a sort of stupor, she walked over the hill and descended the slope, and leaning over the balustrade she looked at the fountains. But the splashing water explained nothing, and she turned to resume her walk; and she reflected that to send away her lovers would avail her nothing, unless she subsequently confessed her sins and obtained the priest's absolution. Monsignor would tell her that to send away her lovers was not sufficient, and he would refuse his absolution unless she promised him not to see them any more. That promise she could not give, for she had promised Ulick that she would sing Grania, and she had promised Owen to see him in three months. It seemed to her both weak and shameful to break either of these promises. The spire of Kensington Church showed sharp as a needle on a calm sky, and it was in a sudden anguish of mind that she determined that her repentance must be postponed. She had considered the question from every point of view, and could not at once reverse her life; the change must come gradually. She had sent Owen away; that was enough for the present.

The numerous pea-fowls had gathered in a bare roosting tree on an opposite hillside, and the immense tails of the cock-birds swept the evening sky. Owen would have certainly compared it to a picture by Honderhoker. The ducks clambered out of the water, keeping their cunning black eyes fixed on the loitering children whom the nursemaid was urging to return home. In Kensington Gardens, the glades were green and gold, and for some little while Evelyn watched the delicate spectacle of the fading light, and insensibly she began to feel that a life of spiritual endeavour was the only life possible to her, and that, however much it might cost her, she must make the effort to attain it. Even to feel that she was capable of desiring this ideal life was a delicious happiness, and her thoughts flowed on for a long while, unmindful of practical difficulties. Suddenly it came upon her like a sudden illumination, that sooner or later she would have to make all the sacrifices that this ideal demanded, that she would not have any peace of mind until she had made them. But even at the same moment the insuperable difficulties of the task before her appeared, and she despaired. The last obstacle was money. As she crossed the road dividing Kensington Gardens from Hyde Park, she understood that the simple fact of owing a few thousand pounds rendered her immediate retirement from the stage impossible. She had insisted that the money she required to live in Paris and study with Madame Savelli should be considered as a debt, which she would repay out of her first earnings. But Owen had laughed at her. He had refused to accept it, and he would never tell her the rent of the house in the Rue Balzac; he had urged that as he had made use of the house he could not allow her to pay for it. In the rough, she supposed that a thousand pounds would settle her debt for the year they had spent in Paris.

Since then she had, however, insisted on keeping herself, but now that she came to think it out, it did not seem that she had done much more than pay her dressmaker's bills. She grew alarmed at the amount of her debt, which seemed in her excited imagination so large that all her savings, amounting to about six or seven thousand pounds, would not suffice to pay it off. Most of her jewellery had been given to her by Owen; there was the furniture, the pictures and the china in Park Lane! She would have to return all these, and the horses, too, if she wished to pay everything, and the net result would be that she would mortally offend the man who had done everything for her. She knew he would not forgive her if she sent back the presents he had made her, nor could she blame him, and she decided that such complete restitution was impossible. But, for all she knew, Monsignor might insist upon it. If he did? She felt that she would go mad if she did not put aside these scruples, which she knew to be in a measure fictitious, but which she was nevertheless unable to shake off. And she could not help thinking, though she knew that such thoughts were both foolish and unjust, that Owen had purposely contrived this thraldom. Then there was only one thing for her to do, to go to Paris after Ulick.... A moment after there came a sinking feeling. She knew that she could not. But what was she to do? All this uncertainty was loosening her brain.... She might go to Monsignor and lay the whole matter before him and take his advice. But she knew if she went to him she must confess. Better that, she thought, than that the intolerable present should endure.

Mental depression and sleepless nights had produced nervous pains in her neck and arms. She could hardly drag herself along for very weariness. The very substance of her being seemed to waste away; that amount of unconsciousness without which life is an agony had been abstracted, leaving nothing but a fierce mentality.

She slept a little after dinner, and awakening about eleven, she foresaw another night of insomnia. The chatter of her conscience continued, tireless as a cricket, and she had lost hope of being able to silence it. The hysterical tears of last night had brought her four hours of sleep, but there was no chance of any repetition of them. It would be useless to go upstairs. She sang through the greater part of "Lohengrin," and then took up the "Meistersinger," and read it till it fell from her hands. ... It was three o'clock; and feeling very tired, she thought that she might be able to sleep. But all night long she saw her life from end to end. Her miserable passage through this life, the weakness of her character and the vileness of her sins were shown to her in a hideous magnification. She was exhibited to herself like an insect in a crystal, and she perceived the remotest antennae of her being.



CHAPTER THIRTY

One night it occurred to her that she might ring for Merat and send her to the chemist's for a sleeping draught. But it was four o'clock in the morning, and she did not like to impose such a task on her maid. Moreover, she might get to sleep a little later on, so she wrote on a piece of paper that Merat was not to come to her room until she rang for her, and she lay down and folded her arms, and once more began to count the sheep through the gate. But that night sleep seemed further than ever from her eyes, and at eight she was obliged to ring. "Merat, I have not closed my eyes all night."

"Mademoiselle ought to have a sleeping draught."

"Yes, I'll take one to-night Get me some tea. Another night like this will drive me mad."

Late in the afternoon she slept for an hour in an armchair, and, a little rested, went to walk in the park. She was not feeling so dazed; her brain was not so light, and the sense of whiteness was gone; the pains in the neck and arms too had died down; they were now like a dim suggestion, a memory. But the greatest relief of all was that she was not thinking, conscience was quiescent and in the calm of the evening and the gentleness of the light, life seemed easier to bear. If she could only get a night's sleep! Now she did not know which was the worst—the reality, the memory, or the anticipation of a sleepless night. She had wandered round the park by the Marble Arch, and had continued her walk through Kensington Gardens, and sitting on the hillside by the Long Water, with the bridge on her left hand and the fountains under her eyes, she looked towards Kensington. There an iridescent sky floated like a bubble among the autumn-tinted trees. She was then thinking of her music and her friends; she hardly knew of what she was thinking, when a thought so clear that it sounded like a bell spoke within her, and it said that the things of which she was thinking were as nothing, and that Life was but a little moment compared with Eternity, and she seemed to see into the final time which lay beyond the grave. "There and not here are the true realities," said the voice, and she got up and walked hurriedly down the hillside, fearing lest the fierce conflict of conscience should begin again in her. She walked as fast as she was able, hoping to extinguish in action the conscience that she dreaded, but she was weak and almost helpless, and had to pause to rest. She stood, one hand on the balustrade, not daring to turn her head lest she should see the spire of the Kensington Church.

She walked across the gardens, through the great groves, and sat down. The grass was worn away about the roots of the trees and through the gnarled trunks she could see the keeper's cottage covered with reddened creeper. Perhaps it was the calm and seclusion that called her thoughts to the convent garden, and she reflected that if she had not accepted the nuns' invitation to tea, her life might have continued without deviation. She was impressed with the slightness of the thread on which our destiny hangs, and then by the inevitableness of our lives. We perceive the governing rule only when we look back. The present always seems chaos, but when we look back, we distinguish the reason of every action, and we recognise the perfect fulfilment of what must be. Her visit to the convent—how little it was when looked at from one side, when looked at from another how extraordinary! If she had known that Monsignor was going to ask her to go there, she would have invented a plausible excuse, but she had had no time to think; his kind eyes were fixed upon her, and he seemed so ready to believe all she said, that her courage sank within her, and she could not lie to him. Perhaps all this was by intention, by the very grace of God! The Virgin might have interceded on her behalf, for is it not said that whoever wears the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel cannot lose his soul? But for the last two years, for more than two years, she has not worn her scapular. The strings had broken, and they had not been mended. She had intended to buy another, but had not been able to bring herself to do so, so hypocritical did it seem.

It might be that these dreadful nights of insomnia had been sent so that she might have an opportunity of realising the wickedness of her life, and the risk she incurred of losing her immortal soul. She dare not have recourse to the sleeping draught, and must endure perhaps another sleepless night. If they had been sent, as she thought they were, for a purpose, she must not dare to hush, by artificial means, the sense God had awakened in her; to do so would be like flying in the face of Providence. She had never suffered from sleeplessness before, and could not think that this insomnia was accidental. No, she dare not have recourse to sleeping draughts, at least not till she had been to confession. If afterwards she did not get to sleep, it would be different. The fear arose in her of taking too much, of dying in her sleep. If she were to awake in hell! And that evening, when Merat reminded her of the draught, she said it was to be left on the table, and that she would take it if she required it.

The darkness could not hide the slim bottle corked with a slim blond cork, and so clear was the vision that she could read the label through the darkness. It was only partially gummed on the bottom, and she could read the pale writing. "To be taken before bedtime." The temptation struck through the darkness, sweet and dreamily seductive it entered her brain. She was tempted as by a dark, dreamless river; hushed in an unconscious darkness she would be upon that river, floating through a long, winding night towards a dim, very distant day. If she were to drink, darkness would sink upon her, and all this visible world, the continual sight of which she felt must end in lunacy, would pass from her. So great was the temptation that she did not dare to get out of bed and put the bottle away—if she did she must drink it, so she lay quite still, her face turned against the wall, trying to find courage in the thought that God had imposed the torture of these sleepless nights upon her in order that she might be saved from the eternal sleeplessness of hell.

Mistakes are made in the preparation of medicines, but if no mistake had been made, a change in her health might unfit her for so large a dose, and if through either of these chances she were to die in her sleep, there was no question that she must awake in hell. She did not dare to go to the draught, but lay quite still, her head close against the wall, praying for darkness, crying for relief from this too fierce mentality; it seemed to be eating up the very substance of her brain.

On the following evening she sat in her armchair watching the clock. It had struck eleven—that was the time for her going to bed, but the hour had become a redoubtable one. Bedtime filled her with fear, and the thought of another sleepless night deprived her of all courage. She did not dare to go upstairs. She sat in her armchair as if in terror of a mortal enemy. She had hidden the bottle, but her maid had ordered another. There were now two, sufficient to procure death, said her conscience, and since dinner the temptation to commit suicide had been growing in her brain; like a vulture perched upon a jag of mountain rock, she could see the temptation watching her. She tried not to see, but the thought grew blacker and larger—its beak was in her brain, and she was drawn, as if by talons, tremblingly from her chair. She was so weak that she could hardly cross the room; but the thought of death seemed to give her courage, and without it she thought she never would have had the strength to get upstairs. The attraction was extraordinary, and her powerlessness to resist it was part of the fascination, and she looked round the room like a victim looking for the knife. She could not see the bottle on her dressing-table, and accepting this as a favourable omen, she undressed and lay down.

After all, she might sleep without having recourse to death; but, lying on the pillow, she could think of nothing but the slim bottle and the slim blond cork, and a thick white liquid, and the dark river into which she would sink, the winding darkness on which she would float, and she had not strength to think whither it led. Her only thought was not to see this world any more; her only desire not to think of Ulick or Owen, and to be tortured no longer by doubt of what was right and what was wrong. She was aware that she was losing possession of her self-control, and would be soon drawn into the dreaded but much-desired abyss; and in this delirium, produced by long insomnia, she began to conceive her suicide as an act of defiance against God, and she rejoiced in her hatred of God, who had afflicted her so cruelly—for it was hatred that had come to her aid, and would enable her to secure a long, long sleep. "Out of the sight of this world"—she muttered the words as she sought the chloral—"I'll sleep, I'll sleep, I must sleep. Sleep or death, one or the other, so long as I am out of the sight of this world." But in her frenzy of desire for sleep she overlooked the slim bottle with the slim blond cork. Yet it stood on the toilet-table amid other bottles, right under her eyes, but over and over again she passed it by, until, frightened at not finding it, she opened drawer after drawer, and rushed to her wardrobe thinking it might be there. She sought for it, throwing her things about, and, not finding it anywhere, a cold sweat broke over her forehead. Another sleepless night and she must go mad. If she did not find it, she must find another way out of this agony, and the thought of cutting her throat, or throwing herself out of the window, flashed across her mind. "Sleep I must have—sleep, sleep, sleep!" she muttered, as with fearing fingers she emptied out the contents of her little workbox, where odds and ends collected. It was her scapular that came up under her hand, and at the sight of it, all her mad revolt was hushed, and a calm settled upon her. "A miracle, a miracle," she murmured, "the Virgin has done this; she interceded for me;" and at the same moment, catching sight of the chloral right under her very eyes, she could no longer doubt the miraculous interposition of the Virgin. For how otherwise could that bottle have escaped her notice? She had looked at the very place where it stood many times, and had not seen it; she had moved the other bottles and she had not seen it. The Virgin had taken it away—she was sure it was not there five minutes ago—or else the Virgin had blinded her eyes to it. A miracle had happened; and in a quivering peace of mind and an intense joy of the heart, she mended the strings of her broken scapular. Then she hung it round her neck, and kneeling by the bedside, she said the prayers that it enjoined; and when she got into bed she saw a light shining in one corner of the room, and, sure that it was the Virgin who had come in person to visit her, she continued her prayers till she fell asleep.



CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

A knock came at her door, and Merat was glad to hear that Mademoiselle had slept. She noticed that the sleeping-draught had not been taken, and picking up the various things that Evelyn had scattered in her search, she wondered at the disorder of the room, making Evelyn feel uncomfortable by her remarks. Evelyn knew it would be impossible for Merat to guess the cause of it all. But when she hesitated about what dress she would wear, declaring against this one and that one, her choice all the time being fixed on a black crepon, Merat glanced suspiciously at her mistress; and when Evelyn put aside her rings, selecting in preference two which she did not usually wear, the maid was convinced that some disaster had happened, and was ready to conclude that Ulick Dean was the cause of these sleepless nights.

Evelyn had chosen this dress because she was going to St. Joseph's or because she supposed she was going there. It did not seem to her that she could confess to anyone but Monsignor. But why he? one priest would do as well as another. She was too tired to think.

Her brain was like one of those autumn days when clouds hang low, and a dimness broods between sky and earth. True that there were the events of last night—her search for the chloral, the finding of her scapular, her belief in a special interposition of Providence, and then her resolution to go to confession. It was all there; she knew it all, but did not want to think about it. She had been thinking for a week, and this was the first respite she had had from thought, and she wished this stupor of brain to continue till four o'clock. That was the time she would have to be at St. Joseph's. He was generally there at that time.

She had lain down on the sofa after breakfast, hoping to sleep a little; if she didn't, the time would be very long; but as she dozed, she began to see the thin, worn face and the piercing eyes, and the intonation of his voice began to ring in her ears. As she thought or as she dreamed, the striking of the clock reminded her of the number of hours that separated them. Only four hours and she would be kneeling at his feet! Then she felt that she had advanced a stage, and was appreciably nearer the inevitable end, and lay staring at the sequence of events. She saw the hours stretching out reaching to him, and she, all the while, was moving through the hours automatically. All kind of similes presented themselves to her mind. She asked herself how it was that Monsignor had come into her life. She had not sought him; she had not wanted him in her life, but he had come! She remembered the first time she saw him—that Sunday morning when she went to St. Joseph's to meet her father's choir—and could recall the exact appearance of the church as he walked across the aisle to the pulpit. It was illuminated by a sudden ray of sunlight falling through one of the eastern windows, and she remembered how it had lighted up the thin, narrow face, bringing a glow of colour to the dark skin till it seemed like one of the carved saints she had seen in Romanesque churches on the Rhine. She remembered the shape of the small head, carried well back, and how she had been impressed by the slow stride with which he crossed the sanctuary. Then her thoughts passed to the moment when, standing in the pulpit, he had looked out on the congregation, seeming to divine the presence of some great sinner there. She had felt that he was aware of her existence, for in that moment the thin grey eyes seemed to see her, even to think her, and they had frightened her, they were so clear, so set on some purpose—God's or the Church's. She had met him that evening at a concert, and how well she remembered her father introducing him! He had spoken to her several minutes; everyone in the room was looking at them, and she recalled the scene—all the girls, their dresses, and the expression of their eyes. But she could not recall what Monsignor had said, only her impressions; the same strange fascination and fear which she had experienced when Owen came to the concerts long ago—that loud winter's night, harsh and hard as iron. Owen had stood talking to her too, and she had been fascinated.... He had admired her singing, and Monsignor had admired her singing; but she was determined not to sing until Monsignor had asked her to sing, and when he has asked her to go to the convent she had gone. It was very strange; she could not account for it. It was all beyond herself, outside of her, far away like the stars, and she felt now as she did whenever she looked at the stars. Was her character essentially weak, and was she liable to all these influences, these facile assimilations? Was there nothing within her, no abiding principle, nothing that she could call her own? She walked up the room, and tried to understand herself—what was she, bad or good, weak or strong? If she only knew what she was, then she would know how to act.

There were her sins against faith. She had striven to undermine her belief in God. She had read Darwin and Huxley for this purpose, and not in the least to obtain knowledge. As Monsignor has said, "When a Catholic loses his faith, it is because he desires to lead a loose life," and she hardly dared to look into her soul, knowing that she would find confirmation of this opinion. She had not been to Mass, because at the Elevation she believed in spite of herself; so she had been as insincere in her unfaith as in her faith. Then there were the sins of the flesh, and their number and their blackness terrified her. There were sins that she strove to put out of her mind at once, sins she was even ashamed to think of; and the thought of confessing them struck her down, and once more it seemed that she could never raise herself out of the slough into which she had fallen. She had all along taken it for granted that a general admission that she had lived with Owen as his wife would be sufficient. But now it seemed to her that she would have to tell Monsignor how gross her life had been.

In a corner of the room her sins crowded, and covering her face with her hands, she was convinced that she could not go to confession.

Before she went away with Owen she had had no sins to confess, or only venial sins; that she had been late for Mass through her own fault; that she had omitted her evening prayers. Her worst sin was the reading of a novel which she thought she ought not to have read, but now her life was all sin. If the priest questioned her she could not answer, she must refuse to answer. So there seemed no hope for her. She could not confess everything, and the conviction suddenly possessed her that God had deserted her, and she could not hope for redemption from her present life. For she could not confess all her sins; her heart would fail her, she would be tempted to conceal something, and then to her other sins she would add the sin of a bad confession.

Nervous pains began again in her arms and neck, and she experienced the same wasting away of the very substance of her being, of the protecting envelope of the unconscious. She was again a mere mentality, and she looked round the room with a frightened, distracted air. On the table was the book Monsignor had given her, Sin and Its Consequences. But she turned from it with a smile. She did not need anyone to tell her what were the consequences of sin—and the familiar proverb of bringing coals to Newcastle rose up in her mind. At the same moment she caught sight of the clock; it was half-past twelve, and she remembered that in about three hours and a half it would be time to go to St. Joseph's. Then like a flash the question came, was it Monsignor's influence that had induced this desire of a pure life in her? She could not deny to herself that she was attracted by his personality. So the question was, how far his personality accounted for the change that had come over her life? Was it the mere personal influence of the prelate, or an inherent sense of right and wrong that compelled her to send her lovers away and change her life? If it were the mere personal influence of Monsignor, her desire of a pure life would not last, and to attain something that was not natural to her she would have ruined her life to no purpose. Owen's influence had died in her; how did she know that Monsignor's would continue even so long? She had lived an evil life for six years; would she lead a good one for the same time? If she knew this she would know how to act. But not only for six years would she have to lead a good life, but till the very end of her life. If she did not persevere till the very end, all this present struggle and the years of self-denial which she was was about to enter on would be useless. She might just as well have had a good time all along. A good time! That was just it. She could not have a good time. She dare not face the agony, the agony which she was at present enduring, so she must go to confession, she must have inward peace.

"So my life is over and done," she said, "and at seven-and-twenty!"

She twisted in her fingers a letter which she had received that morning from Mademoiselle Helbrun. She was staying at the Savoy Hotel, and had just returned from Munich. Evelyn felt she would like to hear about her success as Frika, and how So-and-So had sung Brunnhilde, and the rest of the little gossip about the profession. She would like to lunch with Louise in the restaurant, at a table by the window. She would like to see the Thames, and hear things that she might never hear again. But was it possible that she was never going to join again in the tumult of the Valkyrie? She remembered her war gear, the white tunic with gold breastplates. Was it possible that she would never cry their cry from the top of the rocks; and her favourite horse, the horse that Owen had given her for the part, what would become of him? What would become of her jewellery, of her house, of her fame, of everything? She attempted a last stand against her conscience. Her scruples were imaginary. Owen had said it could not matter to God whether she kissed him or not. But she did not pursue this train of reasoning. She felt it to be wrong. But she could not confess—she could not explain everything, and again she was struck with a sort of mental paralysis. Why Monsignor—why not another priest? No, not another. She could not say why, but not another; he was the one. But perhaps she only wanted to tell someone, a woman—Louise, for instance. If she were to tell Louise—she put the idea out of mind, feeling it to be vain, and trying to think that there was no need why she should leave the stage, and uncertain whether she should stay on the stage if Monsignor forbade her, or if she wanted to even if he allowed her, she put on her hat and went to lunch with Louise. It would help her to pass the time; it would save her from thinking. She must speak to someone. But the Savoy was on her way to St. Joseph's. It was half-way there. A little overcome by the coincidence, she told her servant to call a hansom, and as she drove to the hotel she wondered why she had thought of going to see Louise.

She met her in the courtyard, and the vivacious little woman cried, "My dear, how glad I am to see you!" and she stretched out both hands. Evelyn was more pleased to see her friend than she expected to be, and while listening to her she envied her for being so happy, and she wondered why she was so happy; and while asking herself these questions she noticed her dress. Mademoiselle Helbrun's plump figure was set off to full advantage in a black and white check silk dress, and she wore a wonderful arched hat with flowing plumes of the bird of paradise. She was a prima-donna every inch of her, standing on the steps of her hotel, whereas the operatic stage could hardly be distinguished at all in Evelyn's dress. With the black crepon skirt she wore a heliotrope blouse, and she stood, one foot showing beyond the skirt, in a statue-like attitude, her pale parasol held negligently over one shoulder.

"My dear," she said, "I have come to ask you to let me lunch with you."

"But I shall be enchanted, my dear. I wrote on the chance, never thinking that you would be in town this season."

"Yes, it is strange. I don't know why I am here. There's no one in town."

"Where would you like to lunch? In my room or in the restaurant?"

"It will be gayer in the restaurant. I haven't seen a soul for nearly a week."

"My dear!"

Louise gave her a sharp look, in which the passing thought that Evelyn might be in want of money was dismissed as ridiculous. Louise thought of some unhappy love affair, and when they sat down to lunch she noticed that Evelyn avoided answering a question regarding herself, and turned the conversation on to the Munich performance. The evident desire of Evelyn not to talk about herself clouded Louise's pleasure in talking of herself, and she paused in her account of the Wotan, the Brunnhilde, the conductor and the Rhine Maidens to tell Evelyn of the inquiries that had been made about her—all were looking forward to her Kundry next year. Madame Wagner had said that there never had been such a Brunnhilde.

"I daresay she said so, but at the bottom of her heart she did not like my Brunnhilde. It was against her ideas. She always thought I was too much woman. She said that I forgot that I was a Goddess. And she was right. I never could remember the Goddess. I never remember anything on the stage. 'Tisn't my way. I simply live it all out. I was enthusiastic when Siegfried came to release me, because I should have been enthusiastic about him." Evelyn's thoughts went back to Owen, and she remembered how he had released her from the bondage of music lessons with a kiss.

"But when I came to tell you about the ruined Valhala and the poor fallen Gods you were sorry?"

"Yes, I was sorry for father."

"The All-Father?"

Evelyn laughed.

"No, my own father. That's my way. I think of what has happened to me and I act that. But tell me about the Munich performances."

While Mademoiselle Helbrun told of the different points in which they excelled, Evelyn thought and thought of the strange charm of the woman who had so ably continued the Master's work. She recalled the tall, bending figure, she saw the alley of clipped limes, she remembered the spacious rooms, and then his study, the walls lined with bookcases, books of legends and philosophical works, the room in which he had written "The Dusk of the Gods" and "Parsifal." Thinking of the studious months she had spent in that house, a vivid memory of one night shot across her brain. It was a heavy, breathless night, without star or moon. She had wandered into the dark garden; she had found her way to the grave, and standing by the Master's side she had listened to the music and seen the guests passing across the lighted windows. The warble of the fountain had seemed to her like the pulse of Eternity. All that was three years ago. "It is very wonderful, very wonderful," she thought, and she awoke with a start, and Mademoiselle Helbrun saw she had not been listening. She answered Louise's subsequent remarks, and was glad that what had been had been. She was giving it all up, it was true, but it was not as if she had not known life.

The sun was shining on the great brown river, and out of the smoke-dimmed sky white creamy clouds were faintly rising. Evelyn's eyes had wandered out there, and she seemed to see a thin face and hard, cold eyes, and she asked Louise abruptly what the time was, for she had forgotten her watch. It was only just three o'clock. She returned to the Munich performances, but Louise could see that Evelyn was all the time struggling against an overmastering fate. The only thing she could think of was that Evelyn was being forced into a marriage or an elopement against her will. Once or twice she thought that Evelyn was going to confide in her. She waited, afraid to say a word lest she should check the confidences that her friend seemed tempted to entrust her with. Evelyn's eyes were dull and lifeless. Louise could see that they did not see her, and it was with an effort that Evelyn said, "I am sorry I did not see your Frika;" and once started she rattled on for some time, hardly knowing what she was saying, arguing about the music and expressing opinions about everything and everybody. Stopping abruptly, she again asked her friend what time it was. Louise said that she must not go, and then tried to induce her to come for a drive with her; but Evelyn shook her head—she was engaged. There was no trace of colour in her face, and when Louise asked when they should meet again, she said she did not know, but she hoped very soon. She might be obliged to go to Paris to-morrow, and she had to pay some visits to Scotland at the end of the month. Louise did not like to question her, for she was sure that some momentous event was about to happen. As she drove away Louise said, "I should not be surprised if she did not play Kundry next year."

While wondering at the grotesque movement of the trotting horse, Evelyn tried once more to save herself from this visit to St. Joseph's. She thought of what it would cost her—her present life! Her lovers were gone already, and Monsignor would tell her that she must give up the stage. But these considerations did not alter the fact that she was going to St. Joseph's. She was rolling thither, like a stone down a hill. She saw the streets and people as she passed them, as a stone might if it had eyes. All power of will had been taken from her; it was the same as when she went to meet Owen at Berkeley Square, and in a strange lucidity of mind, she asked herself if it were not true that we are never more than mere machines set in motion by a master hand, predestined to certain courses, purblind creatures who do not perceive their own helplessness, except in rare moments of heightened consciousness. As if to convince herself on this point, she strove to raise her hand to open the trap in the roof of the hansom, and her fear increased on finding that she could not. To acquire the necessary strength, she reminded herself that she was wrecking her whole life for an idea, for, perhaps, nothing more than a desire to confess her sins. Again she tried to raise her hand, and she looked round, feeling that nothing short of some extraordinary accident could save her, nothing except an accident to the horse or carriage could save her artistic life. Some material accident, nothing else.... Monsignor might not be at St. Joseph's. Perhaps he had left town. Nobody stayed in town in September, and for a moment it seemed hardly worth while to continue her drive. Her thoughts came to a standstill, and, as in a nervous vision, Evelyn saw that the whole of her future life depended on her seeing Monsignor that day. She foresaw that if she were turned away from the door of St. Joseph's, she would never come back; never would she be able to bring herself to the point again. She would find Owen waiting for her; wherever she went, she would meet him; sooner or later the temptation to return to him would overcome her. Then, indeed, she would be lost; then, indeed, her tragedy would begin.... Ah! if she could only cease to think for a little while; only for a little while. She had tried to escape from him once before, and had not succeeded because there was no one to help her. Now there was Monsignor. The reflection cheered her, and a few minutes were left to discover how much of her conversion was owing to her original nature, and how much to Monsignor's influence. It seemed to her that if she were certain of this point, she would know whether she should go forward or back. But her heart gave back no answer, and she grew more helpless, and terrified, like a bird fallen into the fascination of a serpent. She was uncertain if she could lead a good life. She no longer desired anything. She was conscious of no sensation, except that she was rolling independent of her own will, like a stone. A moment after, the gable of the church appeared against the sky, and she recognised the poor, ridiculous creature in the tattered black bonnet, whose stiff, crooked appearance she had known since childhood. She had changed little in the last twenty years. She walked with the same sidling gait her hands crossed in front of her like a doll. Her life had been lived about St. Joseph's; the church had always been the theatre and centre of her thoughts. Doubtless she was on her way to Benediction, and the temptation to follow her arose, but was easily resisted. Evelyn paid the cabman his fare, and in an increasing tremor of nervous agitation, she crossed the gravelled space in front of the presbytery. The attendant showed her into the same bare room, where there was nothing to distract her thoughts from herself except the four prints on the walls. She had recourse to them in the hope of stimulating her religious fervour, but as she gazed at St. Monica and St. Augustine she remembered the poor woman she had just seen. There had been scorn of her ridiculous appearance in her heart, and pride that she, Evelyn, had been given a more beautiful body, more perfect health, and a clearer intelligence. So she was overcome with shame. How dare she have scorned this holy woman. If she had been more richly gifted by Nature, to what shameful usage had she put her body and her talents? And Evelyn thought how much more lovely in God's eyes was this poor deformed woman. To sin is the common lot of humanity; but she had done more than commit sins, she had committed the sin, she had striven to tear out of her heart that sense of right and wrong which God had planted there. She had denied the ideal as the Jews had denied Christ. Owen had not done that; he lived up to his principles, such as they were. But she had not thought she was acting right, she had always known that she was doing wrong, and she had gone on doing wrong, stifling her conscience, hoping always that it would be the last time.

That poor woman whose appearance had raised a contemptuous thought in her heart had never sinned against her faith. She had not sought to raise doubts in her heart concerning God and morals; she had lived in ardent belief and love, never doubting that God watched her from his heaven, whither he would call her in good time. Almighty God! She was struck with fear lest she did not believe all that this poor woman believed. Did she believe that she, Evelyn Innes, would appear at the final judgment and be assigned a place for ever and ever in either eternal bliss or torment? She did not know if she believed this. Last night she was sure she believed, but to-day she did not know.... She did not know that heaven was as this poor woman imagined it. She asked herself if she believed in a future life of any sort? She was not sure, she did not know; she was only sure that whether there be a future life or none, our obligation to live according to the dictates of our conscience remains the same. But Monsignor might not deem this sufficient, and might refuse her absolution. She strove to convince herself, hurriedly, aware that the moments were fleeting, that she had a soul. That sense of right and wrong which, like a whip, had driven her here could be nothing else but the voice of her soul; therefore there was a soul, and if there was a soul it could not die, and if it did not die it must go somewhere; therefore there was a heaven and a hell. But in spite of her desire to convince herself, remembrance of Owen's arguments whistled like a wind through her pious exhortations, and all that she had read in Huxley and Darwin and Spencer; the very words came back thick and distinct, and like one who finds progress impossible in the face of the gale, she stopped thinking. "We know nothing ... we know nothing," were the words she heard in the shriek of the wind, and revealed religion appeared in tattered, miserable plight, a forlorn spectre borne away on the wind. So distinct was the vision, so explicit her hearing, that she could not pretend to herself that she was a Christian in any but a moral sense, and this would not satisfy Monsignor. Then question after question pealed in her ears. What should she say when he came? Was it not better for her to leave at once? But then? She took one step towards the door. However thin and shallow her belief might be, she must confess her sins. She felt that she must confess her sins even if she did not believe in confession. Her thoughts paused, and she was terrified by the mystery which her own existence presented to herself.

The door opened, and the priest stood looking at her. She could see that he divined the truth. In the first glance he read that Evelyn had come to confession, and it was for him a moment of extraordinary spiritual elation.

Monsignor Mostyn and Sir Owen had been at school together, and though they had not met since, they frequently heard of each other. Owen's ideas of marriage and religion were well known to the priest. He had heard soon after she had gone away that she had gone with Asher, his old schoolfellow. He knew the pride that Asher would take in destroying her faith, and this diabolic project he had determined to frustrate; and every year when he returned from Rome, he asked if Evelyn was expected to sing in London that season. As year after year went by, his chance of saving her soul seemed to grow more remote; but at the bottom of his heart he believed that he was the chosen instrument of God's grace. That night at the concert in her father's house, the first words—something in her manner, the expression in her eyes, had led him to think that the conversion would be an easy one. But it had come about quicker than he had expected. And as he stood looking at her, he was aware of an alloy of personal vanity and strove to stifle it; he thought of himself as the humble instrument selected to win her from this infamous, this renegade Catholic, and the trouble so visible in her was confirmation of his belief that there can be no peace for a Catholic outside the pale of the Church.

"I have wanted to see you so much," she began hurriedly. "There is a great deal I want to tell you. But perhaps you have no time now."

"My dear child, I have ample time, I am only too pleased to be of service to you. I am afraid you are in trouble, you look quite ill."

The kindness of the voice filled her eyes with tears, and she understood in a moment the relief it would be to tell her troubles to this kind friend; to feel his kind advice allaying them one by one, and to know that the sleepless solitude in which she had tried to grapple with them was over at last. To give her time to recover herself, Monsignor spoke of a letter he had received that morning from the Superior of the Passionist Convent.

"I will not trouble you with her repeated thanks for what you have done for her. She begs me to tell you that she and the sisters unite in inviting you to spend a few days with them. They suggest that you should choose your own time."

"Oh, Monsignor, how can I go and stay with them! I thought I should have died of shame when I went there after the concert with you. Mother Philippa asked me if I had travelled with my father when I went abroad. You must remember, for you came to my assistance."

"I turned the conversation, seeing that it embarrassed you."

"But you must have guessed."

"On account of your father's position at St. Joseph's, I had heard of you.... I had heard of your intimacy with Sir Owen Asher, and the life of an opera singer is not one to which a good Catholic can easily reconcile herself."

As they sat on either side of the table, Evelyn was attracted, and then absorbed, by the distinctive appearance of the priest. His mind was in his face. The long, high forehead, with black hair growing sparely upon it; the small, brilliant eyes, and the long, firm line of the jaw, now distinct, for the head was turned almost in profile. The face was a perfect symbol of the mind behind it; and the intimate concurrence of the appearance and the thought was the reason of its attractiveness. It was the beauty of unity; here was a man whose ideas are so deeply rooted that they express themselves in his flesh. In him there was nothing floating or undecided; and in the line of the thin, small mouth and the square nostrils, Evelyn divined a perfect certainty on all points. In this way she was attracted to his spiritual guidance, and desired the support of his knowledge, as she had desired Ulick's knowledge when she was studying Isolde. Ulick's technical knowledge had been useful to her; upon it she had raised herself, through it she had attained her idea. And in the same way Monsignor's knowledge on all points of doctrine would free her from doubt. Then she would be able to rise above the degradation of earthly passion to that purer and higher passion, the love of God. Doctrine she did not love for its own sake as Monsignor loved it. She regarded it as the musician regards crotchets and quavers, as a means of expression; and she now felt that without doctrine she could not acquire the love which she desired; without doctrine she could not free herself from the bondage of the flesh, and every moment the temptation to give her soul into his keeping grew more irresistible. Rising from her chair, she said—

"Will you hear my confession now, Monsignor?"

"The priest looked at her, his narrow, hard face concentrated in an ardent scrutiny.

"Certainly, my child, if you think you are sufficiently prepared."

"I must confess now; I could not put it off again;" and glancing round the room, she slipped suddenly upon her knees.

The priest put on his stole and murmured a Latin prayer, making the sign of the Cross over the head of his penitent.

"I fear I shall never remember all my sins. I have been living in mortal sin so many years."

"I remember that you spoke to me of intellectual difficulties—concerning faith. You see now, my dear child, that you were deceiving yourself. Your real difficulties were quite different."

"I think that my doubts were sincere," Evelyn replied tremblingly, for she felt that Monsignor expected her to agree with him.

"If your doubts were sincere, what has removed them? What has convinced you of the existence of a future life? That, I believe, was one of your chief difficulties. Have you examined the evidence?"

Evelyn murmured that that sense of right and wrong which she had never been able to drive out of her heart implied the existence of God.

"But savages, to whom the Scriptures are unknown, have a sense of right and wrong. Those who lived before the birth of Christ—the Greeks and Romans—had a sense of right and wrong."

Knowing that the priest's absolution depended upon her acceptance of the doctrine of a future life, she strove to believe as a little child. But it was her sins of the flesh that she wanted to confess, and this argument about the Incarnation had begun to seem out of place. Suddenly it seemed to hear inexpressibly ludicrous that she should be kneeling beside the priest. She could not help wondering what Owen would think of her. She remembered his pointing out that it is stated in the Gospel that the Messiah should be descended from David. Now, Mary was not of royal blood, so it was through Joseph, who was not his father, that Christ was descended from David. But these discrepancies did not matter. She felt the Church to be necessary to her, and that its teaching coincided with her deepest feeling seemed to her enough. But Monsignor was insistent, and he pressed dogma after dogma upon her. All the while the cocoa-nut matting ate into her knees, and she was perplexed by remembrances of sexual abandonments. How to speak of them she did not know, and she was haunted and terrified by the idea of concealing anything which would invalidate her confession. So she hastily availed herself of the first pause to tell him that she had lived with Owen Asher for the last six years. The priest did not trouble to inquire further, and she felt that she could not leave him under the impression that she had lived with Owen the moderate, sexual life which she believed was maintained between husband and wife.

"My life during the last six years," she said, interrupting him, "has been so abandoned. There are few—there are no excesses of which I have not been guilty."

"You have said enough on that point," he answered, to her great relief. But at that moment she remembered Ulick, and she felt that she must mention him. To do so she had again to interrupt the priest.

"But I must tell you—Sir Owen was not the only one"—she bowed her head—"there was another." Then, yielding to the temptation to explain herself, she told Monsignor how it was this second sin that had awakened her conscience. She had tried to look upon Sir Owen as her husband. "But one night at the theatre, during a performance of 'Tristan and Isolde,' I sinned with this second man."

"And this showed you, my dear child, the impossibility of a moral life for one who was born a Catholic except when protected by the doctrine and the sacraments of our Holy Church. And that brings us back to the point from which we started—the necessity of an unquestioning acceptance of the entire doctrine, and, I may add, a general acquiescence in Catholic belief. It seems strange to you that I am more anxious about your sins against faith than your sins of the flesh. It is because I know that without faith you will fall again. It is because I know the danger, the seduction of the theory that even if there be neither hell nor heaven, yet the obligation to lead a moral life exists. Such theory is in essence Protestantism and a delicious flattery of the vanity of human nature. It has been the cause of the loss of millions of souls. You yourself are a living testimony of the untrustworthiness of this shelter, and it is entirely contrary to the spirit of the teaching of the Church, which is that we must lead a moral life in order to gain heaven and avoid the pain of hell."

She leaned heavily on the table to relieve her knees from as much weight as possible, and she thought of the possibility of getting her handkerchief out of her pocket and placing it under her. But when her confession turned from her sins against faith to her sins of the flesh, she forgot the pain of her knees.

"There is one more question I must ask you. You have lived with this man as his mistress for six years, you have spoken of the excesses to which you abandoned yourself, but more important than these is whether you deliberately avoided the probable consequences of your sin—I mean in regard to children?"

"If we sin we must needs avoid the consequences of our sin. I know that it is forbidden—but my profession—I had to think of others—my father—"

"Your answer, my dear child, does not surprise me. It shows me into what depths you have fallen. That you should think like this is part of the teaching of the man whose object was to undermine your faith; it is part of the teaching of Darwin and Huxley and Spencer. You were persuaded that to live with a man to whom you were not married differed in no wise from living with your husband. The result has proved how false is such teaching. The sacrament of marriage was instituted to save the weak from the danger of temptation, and human nature is essentially weak, and without the protection of the Church it falls. The doctrine of the Church is our only safeguard. But that you should have proved unfaithful to this man—this second sin which shocked you so much, and which I am thankful awakened in you a sense of sin, is not more important than to thwart the design of Nature. It is important that you should understand this, for an understanding on this point will show you how false, how contradictory, is the teaching of the naturalistic philosophy in which you placed your trust. These men put aside revealed religion and refer everything to Nature, but they do not hesitate to oppose the designs of Nature when it suits their purpose. The doctrine of the Church has always been one wife, one husband. Polygamy and polyandry are relatively sterile. It is the acknowledged wife and the acknowledged husband that are fruitful; it is the husband and wife who furnish the world with men and heaven with souls, whereas the lover and the mistress fulfil no purpose, they merely encumber the world with their vice, they are useless to Nature, and are hateful in God's sight; the nations that do not cast them out soon become decrepid. If we go to the root of things, we find that the law of the Church coincides very closely with the law of Nature, and that the so-called natural sciences are but a nineteenth century figment. I hope all this is quite clear to you?"

Evelyn acquiesced. Her natural instinct forbade her the original sin—what happened after did not appeal to her; she could feel no interest in the question he had raised. But she was determined to avoid all falsehood—on that question her instinct was again explicit—and when he returned again in his irritation at her insubordination to his ideas, and questioned her regarding her belief as to a future life, her answer was so doubtful that after a moment's hesitation he said—

"If you are not convinced on so cardinal a point of dogma, it is impossible for me to give you absolution."

"Do not deny me your absolution. I cannot face my life without some sign of forgiveness. I believe—I think I believe. You probe too deeply. Sometimes it seems to me that there must be a future life, sometimes it seems to me—that it would be too terrible if we were to live again."

"It would be too terrible indeed, my dear child, if we were to live again unassoiled, unpurified, in all our miserable imperfections. But these have been removed by the priest's absolution, by the sinner's repentance in this world and by purgatory in the next. Those who have the happiness to live in the sight of God are without stain."

"I only know that I must lead a moral life, and that religion will help me to do so. I try to speak the truth, but the truth shifts and veers, and in trying to tell the whole truth perhaps I leave an impression that I believe less than I do. You must make allowance for my ignorance and incapacity. I cannot find words as you do to express myself. Do not refuse me absolution, for without it I shall not have strength to persevere.... I fear what may become of me. If you knew the effort it has cost me to come to you. I have not slept for many nights for thinking of my sins."

"There is one promise you must make me before I give you absolution; you must not seek either of these men again who have been to you a cause of sin."

The pain from her knees was expressed in her voice, and it was almost with a cry that she answered—

"But I have promised to sing his opera."

"I thought, my dear child, that you told me you intended to give up the stage. I feel bound to tell you that I do not see how you are to remain on the stage if you wish to lead a new life"

"I have been kneeling a long while," and a cry escaped her, so acute was the pain. She struggled to her feet and stood leaning against the table, waiting for the pain to die out of her limbs. "The other man is father's friend. If I tell him or if I write to him that he may not come to the house, father will suspect. Then I have promised to sing his opera. Oh, Monsignor—"

"These difficulties," said Monsignor, as he rose from his chair, "appear to you very serious. You are overcome by their importance because you have not adequately realised the awfulness of your state in the sight of God. If you were to die now, your soul would be lost. Once you have grasped this central fact in its full significance, the rest will seem easy. I will lend you a book which I think will help you."

"But, Monsignor, are you going to refuse me your absolution?"

"My dear child, you are in doubt regarding the essential doctrine of the resurrection, and you are unable to promise me not to see one of the men who have been to you a cause of sin."

Her clear, nervous vision met the dry, narrow vision that was the priest, and there was a pause in the conflict of their wills. He saw that his penitent was moved to the depth of her being, and had lost control of herself. He feared to send her away without absolution, yet he felt that she must be forced into submission—she must accept the entire doctrine of the Church. He could not understand, and therefore could not sympathise with her hesitation on points of doctrine. If the penitent accepted the Church as the true Church, conscience was laid aside for doctrine. The value of the Church was that it relieved the individual of the responsibility of life. So it was by an effort of will that he retained his patience. He was determined to reduce her to his mind, but he was instinctively aware of the danger of refusing her absolution; to do so might fling her back upon agnosticism. He was contending with vast passions. An unexpected wave might carry her beyond his reach. The stakes were high; he was playing for her soul with Owen Asher. He had decided to yield a point if necessary, but his voice was so kind, so irresistibly kind, that she heard nothing but it. However she might think when she had left him, she could not withstand the kindness of that voice; it seemed to enter into her life like some extraordinary music or perfume. He could see the effect he was producing on her; he watched her eyes growing bright until a slight dread crossed his mind. She seemed like one fascinated, trembling in bonds that were loosening, and that in the next moment would break, leaving her free—perhaps to throw herself into his arms; he did not dare to withdraw his eyes. An awful moment passed, and she turned slowly as if to leave the room. But at the moment of so doing a light seemed to break upon her brain; where there was darkness there was light. He saw her walk suddenly forward. She threw herself upon her knees at the table, and like one to whom speech had suddenly come back, she said—

"I believe in our holy Church and all that she teaches. Father, I beseech you to absolve me from my sins."

So striking was the change that the priest himself was cowed by it, and his personal pride in his conquest of her soul was drowned in a great awe. He had first to thank God for having chosen him as the instrument of his will, and then he spoke to Evelyn of the wonder and magnitude of God's mercies. That at the very height of her artistic career he should have roused her to a sense of her own exceeding sinfulness was a miracle of his grace.

His presence by her at that moment was a balm. She heard him say that life would not be an easy one, but that she must not be discouraged, that she must remember that she had made her peace with God, and would derive strength from his sacraments. An extraordinary sweetness came over her, she seemed borne away upon a delicious sweetness; she was conscious of an extraordinary inward presence. She did not dare to look up, or even to think, but buried herself in prayer, experiencing all the while the most wonderful and continuous sensation of delight. She had been racked and torn, and had fallen at his feet a helpless mass of suffering humanity. He had healed her, and she felt hope and life returning to her again, and sufficient strength to get up and continue her way. Never again would she be alone; he would be always near to guide her. She heard him tell her that she must recite daily for penance the hymn veni sanctus spiritus, and the thought of this obedience to him refreshed her as the first draught of spring water refreshes the wanderer who for weeks has hesitated between the tortures of thirst and the foul water of brackish desert pools. She was conscious that he was making the sign of the cross over her bowed head, the murmured Latin formula sounded strangely familiar and delicious in her ears, with the more clearly enunciated "Ego te absolvo" towards the close. In that supreme moment for which she had longed, the last traces of Owen's agnostic teaching seemed to fall from her, and she was carried back to the days of her girlhood, to the days of her old prayer-book, a "Garden of the Soul" bound in ivory; and she rose from her knees, weak, but happy as a convalescent.