mbrances of the day before--the two sitting together under
the lime-trees. That was the unendurable bitterness; it was easy to
forgive her Ulick, he was nothing compared to this deliberate
soiling of the past. If she could not have avoided the park, she
might have avoided certain corners sacred to the memory of their
love-story--the groves of limes facing the Serpentine being
especially sacred to his memory.

"But only man remembers; woman is the grosser animal." And in his
armchair Owen meditated on the coarseness of the female mind, always
careless of detail, even seeming to take pleasure in overlaying the
past with the present. "A mistake," he thought. "We should look upon
every episode as a picture, and each should hang in a place so
carefully appointed that none should do injury to another. But few
of us pay any regard to the hanging of our lives--women none at all.
The canvases are hooked anywhere, any place will suffice, no matter
whether they are hung straight or crooked; and a great many are left
on the floor, their faces turned to the wall; and some are hidden
away in cellars, where no memory ever reaches them. Poor canvases!"
And then, his thoughts reverting suddenly to his proposed visit to
Ayrdale Mansions, he asked himself what answer he could give if he
were asked to explain Ulick's presence at Berkeley Square--proofs of
his approval of Ulick's courtship; his motives would be
misunderstood. Never again would his love of her be believed in.

"I have been a fool--one always is a fool, and acts wrongly, when one
acts unselfishly. Self is our one guide--when we abandon self, we
abandon the rudder."

He would have just been content to keep Evelyn as his friend, and she
would have been willing to remain friends with him if he did not
talk against religion, or annoy her by making love to her. "There is
a time for everything," and he thought of his age. Passionate love
should melt into friendship, and her friendship he might have had if
he had thought only of himself; it would have been a worthy crown
for the love he had borne for her during so many years. Now there
was nothing left for him but a nasty sour rind of life to chew to the
end--it was under his teeth, and it was sour enough, and it never
would grow less sour. His sadness grew so deep that he forgot
himself in it, and was awakened by the sound of wheels.

"Somebody coming to call. I won't see anybody," and he rang the bell.
"I am not at home to an