it must be dreadful seeing me come in and out of the
house, suspecting every time I am going to or coming from her. But
it was his own will that I should try to get her back to the stage
and away from Monsignor. All the same, it must have been devilishly
unpleasant." Ulick was very sorry for Owen, and hoped that if he did
succeed in tempting Evelyn away from Monsignor Owen would not hate
him for having done so. Nothing is more common than to hate one's
collaborator. Ulick laughed and suddenly grew serious. "His years are
against him. Old age, always a terror, becomes in an affair of this
kind a special terror, for there is no hope; she will never go back
to him, so I might as well get her. If I don't, Monsignor will"; and
a smile appeared again on his face, for he had begun to feel that he
would succeed in persuading Evelyn to accept the engagement, and to
do that would mean taking him on as a lover.

When he lighted a cigar the conviction was borne in upon him, as the
phrase goes, that to travel in an opera company without a mistress
would be unendurable.... Where could he get one equal to Evelyn?
Nowhere. No one in the company was comparable to her; and of course
he loved her, and she loved him: differently, in some strange way he
feared, but still she loved him, or was attracted to him--it did not
matter which so long as he could succeed in persuading her to accept
the engagement which his directors were most anxious to conclude. As
they walked through Kensington Gardens that afternoon he had noticed
how she had begun to talk suddenly on the question whether it would
be permissible for a woman in certain circumstances to take a second
lover, if her life with her first were entirely broken, and so on.
He had answered perfunctorily, and as soon as possible turned the
conversation upon other things. But it had come back--led back by
her unconsciously to the moral question. So it would seem that she
was coming round. But there was something hysterical, something so
outside of herself--something so irresponsible in her yielding to
him, that he did not altogether like the adventure which he had
undertaken, and asked himself if he loved her sufficiently, finding
without difficulty many reasons for loving her. Nowhere could he
find anybody whom he admired more, or who interested him more. He
had loved her, and they had spent a pleasant time together in that
cottage on the river. A memory of it lit up his sensual imagination,