She opened her prayer book, but in the shadow of the pillar where she was kneeling there was not sufficient light for her to read, so she bent her face upon her hands, intent upon losing herself in prayer.  She abased herself before her Father in Heaven; attaining once more the wonderful human moment when the creature who crouches on this rim of earth implores pardon for her trespass from the beneficent Creator of things.  But to-day her devotional mood was interrupted by sudden thought and sensation of Owen’s presence; she was forced to look up, and convinced that he was very near her, she sought him amid the crowd of people who sat and knelt in front of her, blackening the dusk, a vague darkness in which she could at first distinguish nothing but an occasional white plume and a bald head.  But her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and above the uninteresting backs of middle-aged men she recognised his thin sharp shoulders.  She had been compelled to look up from her prayers, and she wondered if he had been thinking of her.  If so, it was very wrong of him to interrupt her at her prayers.  But a sensation of pleasure arose spontaneously in her.  At that moment he had to remove his hat from the chair on which he had placed it, and she noticed the gold stud links in his large shirt cuffs, the rough material of which the coat was made, and how well it lay along the thin arm.  She imagined the look of vexation on the grave interesting face, and laughed a little to herself.  What was the poor woman to do?  She had a right to her chair.  But she did look so frightened, and was visibly perturbed by the presence of so fine a gentleman.  Evelyn knew the woman by sight—­a curious thin and crooked creature, who wore a strange bonnet and a little black mantle, and walked up the church, her hands crossed like a doll....

No doubt he had driven all the way from Berkeley Square.  She could see him leaning back in his brougham, humming various music, or plaintively thinking about the lady with the red hair, who did not care for him.  Her breath caught her in the throat.  That was the reason why he had come to St. Joseph’s.  It was all over with the red-haired lady, and it was for her that he had come to St. Joseph’s!  But that could not be....  She saw him moving in rich and elegant society, where everyone had a title, and the narrowness of her life compared with his dismayed her.  It was impossible that he could care for her.  She was remaining in Dulwich, with nothing but a few music lessons to look forward to....  But when she reached the operatic stage her life would be like his, and the vision of her future passed before her eyes—­diamonds in stars, baskets of wonderful flowers, applause, and the perfume of a love story, swinging like a censer over it all.