If only she could put the whole thing aside—­refuse to bother her head any more, or else believe blindly what she was told.  She hated wobbling, yet she did nothing else.  Suddenly she felt that if she were to believe at all, it must be like Monsignor.  The magnetism of his faith thrilled her, and, in a moment, it had all became real to her.  But it was too late.  She could never do all her religion asked.  Her whole life would have to come to pieces; nothing of it would remain, and she entirely lost heart when she considered in detail the sacrifices she would have to make.  She saw herself at Dulwich with her father, giving singing lessons, attending the services, and living about St. Joseph’s.  She saw herself singing operas in every capital, and always a new lover at her heels.  Both lives were equally impossible to her.  As she lay back in her carriage driving through the lazy summer streets, she almost wished she had no conscience at all.  What was the use of it?  She had just enough to spoil her happiness in wrong-doing, yet not enough to prevent her doing what deep down in her heart she knew to be wrong.

That evening she wrote a number of letters, and begged a subscription of every friend—­Owen was out of the question and she hesitated whether she should make use of Ulick.  She would have liked to have left him out of this concert altogether, and it was only because she had no one else whom she could depend upon that she consented to let him go off in search of the necessary tenor.  But to take him to the concert did not seem right.

She dipped her pen in the ink, and then laid it down, overcome by a sudden and intolerable melancholy.  She could have cried, so great was her weariness with the world, so worthless did her life seem.  She had begged her father’s forgiveness; he had forgiven her, but she had not sent away her lover....  She had told Monsignor that, in consequence of certain scruples of conscience, she intended to give up the stage, but she had not told him that she had taken another lover and brought him to live with her under her father’s roof.  Whether there was a God and a hereafter, or merely oblivion, such conduct as hers was surely wrong.  She walked to and fro, and came to a resolution regarding her relations with Ulick, at all events in her father’s house.

Then life seemed perfectly hopeless, and she wished Monsignor had not come to see her.  What could she do to shake off this clammy and unhealthy depression which hung about her?  She might go for a walk, but where?  The perspective of the street recalled the days when she used to stand at the window wondering if nothing would ever happen to her.  She remembered the moment with singular distinctness when she heard the voice crying within her?  “Will nothing ever happen?  Will this go on for ever?” She remembered the very tree and the very angle of the house!  Dulwich was too familiar; it was like living in a room where there was nothing but mirrors.