Her mother had lost her voice in the middle of her career, and her daughter had abandoned the stage at the moment of her greatest triumph!  Looking at her jewels scattered all over the bed, Evelyn wondered what was going to happen to her.  Was she really going to leave the stage?  She—­Evelyn Innes?  When she thought of it, it seemed impossible.  If religion were only a craze.  If she were to go back to Owen, or to other lovers?  How strange it was; it seemed strange to be herself, and yet it was quite true.  Remembering that on Sunday she would partake of the Body and Blood which her Saviour had given for the salvation of sinners, her soul suddenly hushed, and catching sight of the jewels which symbolised the sacrifice she was making, it seemed to her that she could afford much greater sacrifices for what she was going to receive....

She saw lights dying down in the distance, and the world which had once seemed so desirable seemed to her strangely trivial and easily denied.  Already she could look back at the poor struggling ones, struggling for what to-morrow will be abandoned, forgotten, passing illusions; and she wondered how it was that she had not always thought as she thought to-day.  Her thoughts passed into reveries, and she awoke, remembering that Monsignor had told her that he did not like her living alone in Park Lane.  But in Dulwich she would be with her father, whom she had long neglected, and she would be near St. Joseph’s and her confessor.  At the same moment she remembered that she could not write to her lovers from Park Lane.  She put her jewels back in the safe, and told Merat to pack sufficient things for a month, and to follow her with them to Dulwich.  Merat asked for more precise instruction, but Evelyn said she must use her good sense; she was going away at once, and Merat must follow by a later train.

“Then Mademoiselle does not want the carriage?”

“No, I shall go by train.”

* * * * *

She found her father in the workroom, and the sight of him in his cap and apron mending an old musical instrument caused many home scenes to flash across her mind, and she did not know whether it was from curiosity or a desire to please him that she asked the name of the strange little instrument he was repairing.  It looked like an overgrown concertina, and he explained that it was a tiny virginal, and pointed out the date; it was made in 1631, in Roman notation.

“Father,” she said, “I have come back to you; we shall never be separated any more—­if you’ll have me back.”

“Have you back, dear!  What has happened now?”

He stood with a chisel in his hand, and she noticed that he dug the point nervously into the soft deal plank.  She sat down on a small wooden stool, and kicking the shavings with her feet, she said—­

“Father, a great deal has happened.  I have sent Owen away ...  I shall never see him again; I’m sorry to have to speak about him to you; you mustn’t be angry; he was very good to me, and he asked me to marry him; he did everything—­I’m afraid I’ve broken his heart.”