once,
why shouldn't they kindle again? It would be a hard struggle between
the flesh and the idea, the idea which urged her in one direction,
and the flesh which drew her in another. Which would prevail? Ulick
was young, and Owen knew how her senses flared up, how certain music
set her senses on fire and certain literature. "All alone in that
flat," and the vision becoming suddenly intense he saw Ulick leading
her to the piano, and heard the music, and saw her eyes lifted as
she had lifted them many times to him--grey marble eyes, which would
never soften for him again.

He had known her for so many years, and thought of her so intensely
that every feature of her face could be recalled in its minutest
line and expression; not only the general colour of her face, but
the whiteness of the forehead, and where the white skin freckled.
How strange it was that freckles should suit her, though they suited
no other woman! And the blue tints under the eyes, he remembered
them, and how the blue purpled, the rose red in the cheeks, and the
various changes--the greys in the chin, the blue veins reticulating
in the round white neck, and the pink shapes of the ear showing
through the shadow. Her hair was visible to him, its colour in the
light and in the shadow; and her long thin hands, the laces she wore
at the wrists, her rings, the lines of the shoulders, and of the
arms, the breasts--their size, their shape, and their very weight--
every attitude that her body fell into naturally. From long knowledge
and intense thinking he could see her at will; and there she was at
the end of the sofa crossing and uncrossing her lovely legs, so long
from the knees, showing through the thin evening gown; he thought of
their sweetness and the seduction of the foot advancing, showing an
inch or two beyond the skirt of her dress. And then she drew her
rings from her fingers, dropping them into her lap, and
unconsciously placed them again over the knuckles.

A great deal he would give--everything--for Ulick's youth, so that he
might charm her again. But of what avail to begin again? Had he not
charmed her before? and had not her love flowed past him like water,
leaving nothing but a memory of it; yet it was all he had--all that
life had given him. And it was so little, because she had never
loved him. Every other quality Nature had bestowed upon her, but not
the capacity for loving. For the first time it seemed to him he had
begun to understand t