Of the rest of the sermon Evelyn heard very little....  It was the phrase that if we look into our lives we shall find that our most painful moments are due to our having followed the doctrine of the world instead of the doctrine of Christ that touched Evelyn.  It seemed to explain things in herself which she had never understood.  It told her why she was not happy. ...  Happy she had never been, and she had never understood why.  Because she had been leading a life that was opposed to what she deemed to be essentially right.  How very simple, and yet she had never quite apprehended it before; she had striven to close her ears, but she had never succeeded.  Why?  Because that whisper can be no more abolished than the murmur of the sea from the shell.  How true!  That murmur had never died out of her ears; she had been able to stifle it for a while—­she had never been able to abolish it—­and what convincing proof this was of the existence of God!

Disprove it you couldn’t, for it was part of one’s senses—­the very evidence on which the materialists rely to prove that beyond this world there is nothing.  Yet what a flagrant contradiction her conduct was to the murmur of spiritual existence.  And that was why she was not happy.  That was why she would never be happy till she reformed....  But the preacher spoke as if it were easy for all who wished it to change their lives.  How was she to change her life?  Her life was settled and determined for her ever since the day she went away with Owen.  If she sent Owen away again the same thing would happen; she would take him back.  She could not remain on the stage without a lover; she would take another before a month was out.  It was no use for her to deceive herself!  That is what she would do.  To sing Isolde and live a chaste life, she did not believe it to be possible—­and she sat helpless, hearing vaguely the Credo, her attention so distracted that she was only half aware of its beauty.  She noticed that the “Et incarnatus est” was inadequately rendered, but that she expected.  It would require the strange, immortal voices she had heard in Rome.  But the vigour with which the basses led the “Et resurrexit” was such that the other parts could not choose but follow.  She felt thankful to them; they dissipated her painful personal reverie.  Yes, the basses were the best part of the choir; among them she recognised two of her father’s oldest pupils; she had known them as boys singing alto—­beautiful voices they had been, and were not less beautiful now.  But if she desired to reform her life, how was she to begin?  She knew what the priest would tell her.  He would say, send away your lover; but to send him away in the plenitude of her success would be odious.  He was unhappy; he was ill; he needed her sorely.  His mother’s health was a great anxiety to him, and if, on the top of all, she were to announce that she intended leaving him, he would break down altogether.  She owed everything to