f these men and women here think as you do; they are
satisfied to live. Why can't you do the same?"

"I am different from them."

"But what is there different in you?"

"You don't think then, Owen, that every one has a destiny?"

"Evelyn, dear, how can you think these things? We are utterly
unimportant; millions and billions of beings have preceded us,
billions will succeed us. So why should it be so important that a
woman should be true to her lover?"

"Does it really seem to you an utterly unimportant matter?"

"Not nearly so important as losing the woman one loves." And looking
into her face as he might into a book, written in a language only a
few words of which he understood, he continued: "And the idea seems
to have absorbed you, to have made its own of you; it isn't
religion, I don't think you are a religious woman. You usen't to be
like this when I took you away to Paris. You were in love with me,
but not half so much in love with me as you are now with this idea,
not so subjugated. Evelyn, that is what it is, you are subjugated,
enslaved, and you can think of nothing else."

"Well, if that is so, Owen--and I won't say you are utterly wrong--
why can't you accept things as they are?"

"But it isn't true, Evelyn? You will outlive this idea. You will be
cured."

"I hope not."

"You hope not? Well, if you don't wish to be cured it will be
difficult to cure you. But now, here in this house, where everything
is different, do you not feel the love of life coming back upon you?
And can you accept negation willingly as your fate?"

Evelyn asked Owen what he meant and he said:

"Well, your creed is a negative one--that no man shall ever take you
in his arms again, saying, 'Darling, I am so fond of you!' You would
have me believe that you will be true to this creed? But don't I
know how dear that moment is to you? No, you will not always think
as you do now; you will wake up as from a nightmare, you will wake
up."

"Do you think I shall?" Soon after their talk drifted to Lady Ascott
and to her guests, and Owen narrated the latest intrigues and the
mistake Lady Ascott had been guilty of by putting So-and-so and
So-and-so to sleep in the same corridor, not knowing that their
_liaison_ had been broken off at least three months before.

"Jim is now in love with Constance."

"How very horrible!"

"Horrible? It is that fellow Mostyn who has put these ideas into your
head!"

"He has put nothing into my he