social necessities, but the abstract moralities, that sexual intercourse is wrong except between married people, and that it is wrong to tell a lie, even if the lie be a perfectly harmless one, exist of themselves.  That we cannot bring abstract moralities into the focus of our understanding is no argument.  As well deny the stars because we cannot understand them.  That abstract moralities impose on us should be a sufficient argument that they cannot be the futilities that Owen would argue them to be—­not them, he only protested against one.... (She had not thought of that before—­Owen was no more rational than she.) That the idea of chastity should persist in spite of reason is proof of its truth.  For what more valid argument in favour of a chaste life than that the instinct of chastity abides in us?  After all, what we feel to be true is for us the greatest truth, if not the only real truth.  Ulick was nearer the truth than Owen.  He had said, “A sense which eludes all the other senses and which is not apprehensible to reason governs the world, all the rest is circumstantial, ephemeral.  Were man stripped one by one of all his attributes, his intelligence, his knowledge, his industry, as each of these shunks was broken up and thrown aside, the kernel about which they had gathered would be a moral sense.”

Evelyn remembered that when she had sent Owen away before, he had said, “Sexual continence at best is not the whole of morality; from your use of the word one would think that it was.”  But for her the sexual conscience was the entire conscience—­she had no temptation to steal.  There was lying, but she was never tempted to tell lies except for one reason; she could not think of herself telling a lie for any other.  To her the sexual sin included all the others.  She turned her head aside, for the bitterness of her conscience was unendurable, and she vowed that, whatever happened, she would speak the truth if Owen questioned her again.  She could never bring herself to tell such horrible falsehoods again.

These revulsions of feeling alternated with remembrances of Owen’s tenderness; fugitive sensations of him tingled in her veins, and ill-disposed her to Ulick.  She spoke little, and sat with averted eyes.  When he asked her if he should come to her room, she answered him peremptorily; and he heard her lock her door with a determined hand.

As she lay in bed, conscious of the inextricable tangle of her life, it was knotting so closely and rapidly that her present double life could not endure much longer, the odious taste of the lies she had told that afternoon rose again to her lips, and, as if to quench the bitterness, she vowed that she would tell Owen the truth ... if he asked her.  If he did not ask her she would have to bear the burden of her lies.  She tried not to wish that he might ask her.  Then questions sallied from every side.  She could not marry Owen without telling him about Ulick.  She could not marry Ulick without telling him that