This afternoon, whether by accident or design, he said no word that might jar on her religious scruples; he even appeared to sympathise with religious life, and admitted that the world was not much, and to renounce the world was sublime.  The conversation paused, and he said, “I think the tea-service suits the room.  You haven’t thanked me for it yet, Evelyn.”

“I don’t know that I ought to accept any more presents from you.  I have accepted too much as it is.”

She was conscious of her feebleness.  It would have been better to have said, “I am another man’s mistress,” but she could not speak the words, and he asked if they might have tea in the new service.  She did not answer, so he rang, and when the servant left the room he took her hands and drew her closer to him.  “I am another man’s mistress, you must not touch me,” rang in her brain, but he did not kiss her, and the truth was not spoken.

“Lady Duckle is still at Homburg, is she not?” he asked, but he was thinking of the inexplicable event each had been in the other’s life.  They had wandered thus far, now their paths divided, for nothing endures.  That is the sadness, the incurable sadness!  He was getting too old for her; in a few more years he would be fifty.  But he had hoped that this friendship would continue to the end of the chapter.  And while he was thinking these things, Evelyn was telling him that Lady Duckle had met Lady Mersey at Homburg, and had gone on with her to Lucerne, where they hoped to meet Lady Ascott.

“You are going to shoot with Lord Ascott next month?” she said, and looking at him she wondered if their relations were after all no more than a chance meeting and parting.  While he spoke of Lord Ascott’s pheasant shooting, she felt that whatever happened neither could divorce the other from his or her faults.

“How beautiful the park is now, I like the view from your windows.  I like this hour; a sense of resignation is in the air.”

“Yes,” she said, “the sky is beautifully calm,” and she experienced a return of old tendernesses, and she had no scruple, for he did not make love to her, and did not kiss her until he rose to leave.  Then he kissed her on the forehead and on the cheek, and refrained from asking if they were reconciled.

Never had he been nicer than he had been that afternoon, and she dared not look into her heart, for she did not wish to think that she would send him away.  Why should she send him away? why not the other?  She could not answer this question; she only knew that the choice had fallen upon Owen.  She must send him away, but what reasons should she give?  She felt that her conduct that afternoon had rendered a complete rupture in their relations more difficult than ever.  It was as she lay sleepless in bed long after midnight that the solution of the difficulty suddenly sounded in her brain.  She must write to him saying that he might come to see her once more,