The homeliness of this speech seemed to accentuate the moral truth, and making application of it to herself, she felt that if she were to take another lover she would not stop at twenty.  Her face contracted in an expression of disgust at this glimpse of her inner nature which had been flashed upon her; and looking into herself she could discover nothing but a talent for singing and acting.  If she had not had her voice, God only knows what she would have been, and she turned her eyes from a vision of gradual decadence.  If she were not to sink to the lowest, she must hold to her love of Owen, and not yield to her love of Ulick.  This low nature which she could distinguish in herself she must conquer, or it would conquer her.  “If one man isn’t enough for a woman, twenty are not too many.”  The humble working woman who had uttered these words was right....  If she were to give way she would have twenty and would end by throwing herself over one of the bridges.

She felt that she must marry Owen, and under this conclusion she stopped like one who has come face to face with a blank wall.  But did she love him well enough to marry him?  She loved him, but was her present love as intense as the love that had obsessed her whole nature in Paris six years ago?  She tried to think that it was, and found casual consolation in the thought that if she were not so mad about him now as she was then, her love was deeper; it had become a part of herself, and was founded on such knowledge of his character that nothing could change or alter it.  She knew now that in spite of all his faults she could trust him, and that was something; she knew that his love for her was enduring, that it was not a mere passing passion, as it easily might have been.  He had given her fame, wealth, position—­everything a woman could desire.  Some might blame him for having taken her away from her home, but she did not blame him, for she knew that she could not have remained with her father at that time.  If she had not gone away with Owen she might have killed herself; something had given way within her, she had to do what she had done.

But did she love Owen, or was she getting tired of him?  It was so easy to ask and so difficult to answer these questions.  However closely we look into our souls, some part of the truth escapes us.  One always slurred something or exaggerated something....  She remembered that Owen had been very tiresome lately; his egoism was ceaseless; it got upon her nerves, and she felt that, no matter what happened to her, she could not endure it.  There were his songs!  How tired she was of talking about his songs, the long considerations whether this chord or the other chord, this modulation or another, were the better.  He could not compose a dozen bars without having them engraved and sending copies to his friends.  He wished the whole world to be occupied about him and his affairs.  He was so childish about his music.  Other people said, “Oh, yes, very pretty,” but she had to sing it.  If she refused, it meant unpleasantness, and though he did not often say so, a charge of ingratitude, for, of course, without him she wouldn’t have been able to sing at all.  The worst of it was that he did not see the ridiculous side.