e only sure of that. He thought of the
women he knew. Georgina was the first to come up in his mind. He had
been to see her, and had come away at a loss to understand what he had
ever seen in her. She had struck him as vulgar and middle-class, sly,
with a taste for intrigue. He remembered that was how she had struck him
when he first saw her. But if anyone had described her as vulgar and
middle-class six months ago. Good heavens!

CHAPTER SEVEN

The day grew too fine, as he said, for false notes, so the music lesson
was abandoned, and they went to sit in the garden behind the picture
gallery, a green sward with high walls covered with creeper, and at one
end a great cedar with a seat built about the trunk; a quiet place rife
with songs of birds, and unfrequented save by them. They had taken with
them Omar's verses, and Evelyn hoped that he would talk to her about
them, for the garden of the Persian poet she felt to be separated only
by a wicket from theirs. But Owen did not respond to her humour. He was
prepense to argue about the difficulties of her life, and of the urgent
necessity of vanquishing these.

He had noticed, he said, as they sat in the park, that she had a weak
face. Her thoughts were far away; he had caught her face, as it were,
napping, and had seen through it to the root of her being. The
conclusion at which he had arrived was that she was not capable of
leading an independent life.

"Am I not right? Isn't it so?"

"You think that because I don't leave father and go abroad."

"You might go abroad and lead a dependent life; you might stay at home
and lead an independent life."

He asked her what offers of marriage she had had.

One was from the Vicar, a widower, a man of fifty, the other from a
young man in a solicitor's office. She did not care for either, and had
not entertained their proposals for a second.

"If you marry anyone, it must be a duke. Life is a battle; society will
get the better of us unless we get the better of society. Everyone must
realise that--every young man, every young woman. We must conquer or be
conquered."

Society, he argued, did not require a chaperon from her; society would,
indeed, resent a chaperon if she were to appear with one. Society not
only granted her freedom, but demanded that she should exercise it. As a
freelance she would be taken notice of, as a respectable, marriageable
girl she would be passed over. The cradle and the masterpiece were
i