rreconcilable ideals. He drew an amusing picture of the prima donna's
husband, the fellow who waits with a scarf ready to wind it round the
throat of his musical instrument; the fellow who is always on the watch
lest someone should walk off with his means of subsistence. Evelyn
listened because she liked to hear him talk; she knew that he was trying
to influence her with argument, but it was he himself who was
influencing her, she dreaded his presence, not his argument.

She got up and walked across the sward; and as they returned through the
flowery village street, the faint May breeze shed the white chestnut
bloom about their feet. It seemed to him better to say nothing; there
are times when silence is more potent than speech. They were walking
under the trees of the old Dulwich street, and so charming were the
hedge-hidden gardens, and the eighteenth-century houses with white
porticoes, that Owen could not but think Dulwich at that moment seemed
the natural nativity of the young girl's career. A few moments after
they were at Dowlands. She was trembling, and had no strength of will to
refuse to ask him in. She would have had the strength if she had not
been obliged to give him her hand. She had tried to bid him good-bye
without giving her hand, and had not succeeded, and while he held her
hand her lips said the words without her knowing it. She spoke
unconsciously, and did not know what she had said till she had said it.

And while they waited for tea, Evelyn lay back in a wicker chair
thinking. He had said that life without love was a desert, and many
times the conversation trembled on the edge of a personal avowal, and
now he was playing love music out of "Tristan" on the harpsichord. The
gnawing, creeping sensuality of the phrase brought little shudders into
her flesh; all life seemed dissolved into a dim tremor and rustling of
blood; vague colour floated into her eyes, and there were moments when
she could hardly restrain herself from jumping to her feet and begging
of him to stop.... The servant brought in the tea, and she thought she
would feel better when the music ceased. But neither did the silence nor
the tea help her. He sat opposite her, his eyes fixed upon her, that
half-kindly, half-cynical face of his showing through the gold of his
moustache. He seemed to know that she could not follow the conversation,
and seemed determined to drive the malady that was devouring her to a
head. He continued to speak o