“Owen, dear, I cannot go with you.  If I did, you know how it would end, I being what I am, and you being what you are.  There would be no sense in my going yachting unless I went as your mistress, and I cannot do that.”

“You love that fellow Ulick Dean too much.”

“I don’t love him at all....  Owen, you will never understand.”

“Understand!” he cried, starting to his feet, “this is madness, Evelyn.  I see!  I suppose you think it wrong to have two lovers at the same time.  Grace has come to you through sin.  You are going to get rid of both of us.”

Evelyn sat quite still as if hypnotised.  She was very sorry for him, but for no single moment did she think she would yield.

Suddenly he asked her why he should be the one to be sent away, and he pleaded the rights of old friendship, going even so far as to suggest that even if she liked Ulick better she should not refuse to see him sometimes.

“I have no right to seem shocked at anything you may say.  I told you Ulick was my lover, but I did not say he was going to remain my lover.”

“Then what are you going to do?  Will that priest get hold of you?  I know him—­I was at Eton with him.  He always was—­” and Owen muttered something under his breath.  “Surely, Evelyn, you are not thinking of going to confession.  After all my teaching has it come to this?  My God!” he said, as he walked up the room, “I’d sooner Ulick got you than that damned hypocritical fool.  You are much too good for God,” he said, turning suddenly and looking at her, remarking at that moment the pretty oval of her face, the arched eyebrows, the clear, nervous eyes.  “You’ll be wasted on religion.”

“From your point of view, I suppose I shall be.”

They talked on and on, saying what they had said many times before.  Sometimes Evelyn seemed to follow his arguments, and thinking that he was convincing her, he would break off suddenly.  “Well, will you come for a cruise with me in the Medusa?  I’ll ask all your friends—­we’ll have such a pleasant time.”

“No, Owen, no, it’s impossible, you don’t understand.  I don’t blame you—­you never will understand.”

And they looked at each other like wanderers standing on the straits dividing two worlds.  The hands of the clock pointed to five o’clock.  The servants had taken the tea-service away.  Owen had urged Evelyn not to abandon the stage; he had urged the cause of Art; he had urged that her voice was her natural vocation; he had spoken of their love, and of the happiness they had found in each other—­the conversation had drifted from an argument concerning the authenticity of the Gospels to a lake where they had spent a season five years ago.  She saw again the reedy reaches and the steep mountain shores.  They had been there in the month of September, and the leaves of the vine were drooping, and the grapes ready for gathering.  They had been sweethearts only a little while, and the drives about the lake was one of his happiest memories.