turned to glance at his watch, and to kill the last five minutes of the prescribed time he thought of Evelyn’s scruples.  She would have to read certain books—­Darwin and Huxley he relied upon, and he reposed considerable faith in Herbert Spencer.  But there were books of a lighter kind, and their influence he believed to be not less insidious.  He took one out of his portmanteau—­the book which he said, had influenced him more than any other.  It opened at his favourite passage—­

’I am a man of the Homeric time; the world in which I live is not mine, and I know nothing of the society which surrounds me.  I am as pagan as Alcibiades or as Phidias....  I never gathered on Golgotha the flowers of the Passion, and the deep stream which flowed from from the side of the Crucified and made a red girdle round the world never bathed me in its tide.  I believe earth to be as beautiful as heaven, and I think that precision of form is virtue.  Spirituality is not my strong point; I love a statue better than a phantom.’ ...  He could remember no further; he glanced at the text and was about to lay the book down, when, on second thoughts, he decided to take it with him.

Her door was ajar; he pushed it open and then stopped for moment, surprised at his good fortune.  And he never forgot that instant’s impression of her body’s beauty.  But before he could snatch the long gauze wrapper from her, she had slipped her arm through the sleeves, and, joyous as a sunlit morning hour, she came forward and threw herself into his arms.  Even then he could not believe that some evil accident would not rob him of her.  He said some words to that effect, and often tried to recall her answer to them; he was only sure that it was exquisitely characteristic of her, as were all her answers—­as her answer was that very evening when he told her that he would have to go to London at the end of the week.

“But only for some days.  You don’t think that I shall be changed?  You’re not afraid that I shall love you less?”

“No; I was not thinking of you, dear.  I know that you’ll not be changed; I was thinking that I might be.”

He withdrew the arm that was round her, and, raising himself upon his elbow, he looked at her.

“You’ve told me more about yourself in that single phrase than if you had been talking an hour.”

“Dearest Owen, let me kiss you.”

It seemed to them wonderful that they should be permitted to kiss each other so eagerly, and it sometimes was a still more intense rapture to lie in each other’s arms and talk to each other.

The dawn surprised them still talking, and it seemed to them as if nothing had been said.  He was explaining his plans for her life.  They were, he thought, going to live abroad for five, six, or seven years.  Then Evelyn would go to London, to sing, preceded by an extraordinary reputation.  But the first thing to do was to get a house in Paris.