more exquisite.  She heard him say what she wished him to say, and she saw the white villa in its garden planted with rhododendrons and chestnut trees in flower.  The mild spring air, faint with perfume, dilated her nostrils, and her eyes drank in the soft colour of the light shadows passing over the delicate grass and the light shadows moving among the trees.  She lay back in her chair, her eyes fixed on a distant corner of the room, and her life went by, clear and surprising as pictures seen in a crystal.  When she grew weary of the villa, she saw herself on the stage, and heard her own voice singing as she wished to sing.  Nor did she forsee any break in the lulling enchantment of her life of music and love.  She knew that Owen did not love her at present, but she never doubted that she could get him to love her, and once he loved her it seemed to her that he must always love her.  What she had heard and read in books concerning the treachery of men, she remembered, but she was not influenced, for it did not seem to her that any such things were to happen to her.  She closed her eyes so that she might drink more deeply of the vision, so that she might bring it more clearly before her.  Like aspects seen on a misty river, it was as beautiful shadows of things rather than the things themselves.  The meditation grew voluptuous, and as she saw him come into her room and take her in his arms, her conscience warned her that she should cease to indulge in these thoughts; but it was impossible to check them, and she dreamed on and on in kisses and tendernesses of speech.

That afternoon she was going to have tea with some friends, and as she paused to pin her hat before the glass, she remembered that if Owen were right, and that there was no future life, the only life that she was sure of would be wasted.  Then she would endure the burden of life for naught; she would not have attained its recompense; the calamity would be irreparable; it would be just as if she had not lived at all.  Thought succeeded thought in instantaneous succession, contradicting and refuting each other.  No, her life would not be wasted, it would be an example to others, it was in renunciation that we rose above the animal and attained spiritual existence.  At that moment it seemed to her that she could renounce everything but love.  Could she renounce her art?  But her art was not a merely personal sacrifice.  In the renunciation of her art she was denying a great gift that had been given to her by Nature, that had come she knew not whence nor how, but clearly for exercise and for the admiration of the world.  It therefore could not have been given to her to hide or to waste; she would be held responsible for it.  Her voice was one of her responsibilities; not to cultivate her voice would be a sort of suicide.  This seemed quite clear to her, and she reflected, and with some personal satisfaction, that she had incurred duties toward herself.  Right and wrong, as Owen said,