“She is much nicer, a hundred times more exciting than I thought.  Poetry, sympathy, it is like living in a dream.”  He asked himself if he liked her better than Georgina, and answered himself that he did; but deep down in his heart he knew that the other woman had given him deeper and more poignant emotions, and he knit his brows, for he hated Georgina.

Owen was the first temptation in Evelyn’s life, and it carried her forward with the force of a swirling river.  She tried to think, but thoughts failed her, and she hooked her black cloth skirt and thrust her arms into her black cloth jacket with puffed sleeves.  She opened her wardrobe, and wondered which hat he would like, chose one, and hastened downstairs.

“You’ve not been long ... you look very nice.  Yes, that is an improvement.”

His notice of her occasioned in her a little flutter of joy, a little exaltation of the senses, and she walked on without speaking, deep in her pleasure, and as the sensation died she became aware that she was very happy.  The quiet silence of the Spring morning corresponded to her mood, and the rustle of last year’s leaves communicated a delicious emotion which seemed to sing in the currents of her blood, and a little madness danced in her brain at the ordinary sight of nature.  “This way,” she said, and they turned into a lane which almost looked like country.  There were hedges and fields; and the sunlight dozed amid the cows, and over the branches of the high elm the Spring was already shaking a soft green dust.  There were nests in the bare boughs—­whether last year’s or this year’s was not certain.  Further on there was a stile, and she thought that she would like to lean upon it and look straight through the dim fields, gathering the meaning which they seemed to express.  She wondered if Owen felt as she did, if he shared her admiration of the sunlight which fell about the stile through the woven branches, making round white spots on the roadway.

“So you were surprised to hear that I had given up my trip round the world?”

“I was surprised to hear you had given it up so that you might hear me sing.”

“You think a man incapable of giving up anything for a woman?”

He was trembling, and his voice was confused; experience did not alter him; on the verge of an avowal he was nervous as a schoolboy.  He watched to see if she were moved, but she did not seem to be; he waited for her to contest the point he had raised, but her reply, which was quite different, took him aback.

“You say you came back to hear me sing.  Was it not for another woman that you went away?”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

“The woman with the red hair who was at your party?”

The tale of a past love affair often served Owen as a plank of transition to another.  He told her the tale.  It seemed to him extraordinary because it had happened to him, and it seemed to Evelyn very extraordinary because it was her first experience of the ways of love.