ecalled the days when she used to
stand at the window wondering if nothing would ever happen to her. She
remembered the moment with singular distinctness when she heard the
voice crying within her? "Will nothing ever happen? Will this go on for
ever?" She remembered the very tree and the very angle of the house!
Dulwich was too familiar; it was like living in a room where there was
nothing but mirrors. Dulwich was one vast mirror of her past life. In
Dulwich she was never living in the present. She could not see Dulwich,
she could only remember it. One walk more in that ornamental park! She
knew it too well! And the picture gallery meant Owen--she would only see
him and hear his remarks. Her thoughts reverted to his proposal of
marriage and her acceptance. Not for the whole world! Why, she did not
know. He had been very good to her. Her ingratitude shocked her. She
shrugged her shoulders hysterically; she could not help it--that was how
she felt.

But Ulick? Should she marry him and accept the Gods? That would settle
everything.

But a sense of humour solves nothing, and at that moment the servant
brought her a small brown paper parcel. It looked like a book. It was a
book. She opened it. Monsignor had sent her a book. As she turned the
leaves she remembered the parcels of books from Owen which she used to
open in the same room, sitting in the same chair. _Sin and its
Consequences_! She began reading it. On one point she was sure, that sin
did exist.... If we felt certain things to be wrong, they were wrong; at
least they were wrong for those who thought them wrong, and she had
never been able to feel that it was right to live with a man to whom she
was not married. Everyone had a moral code. Owen would not cheat at
cards, and he thought it mean to tell lies--a very poor code it was, but
still he acted up to it. She did not know how Ulick felt on such
matters; his beliefs, though numerous and picturesque, supplied no moral
code, and she could not live on symbols, though perhaps they were better
than Owen's theories. Her mistake from the beginning was in trying to
acquire a code of morals which did not coincide with her feelings. But
the teaching in this book did coincide with her feelings. Could she
follow it? That was the point. Could she live without a lover? Owen
thought not. She laughed and then walked about the room, unable to shake
off a dead weight of melancholy. Though the Church was all wrong, and
there was n