little yachts, carrying each a portent of her own success or failure.  The Albert Hall curved over the tops of the trees, and sheep strayed through the deep May grass in Arcadian peacefulness; but the most vivid impression was when they had come upon a lawn stretching gently to the water’s edge.  Owen had feared the day was too cold for sitting out, but at that moment the sun contradicted him with a broad, warm gleam.  He had fetched two chairs from a pile stacked under a tree, and sitting on that lawn, swept by the shadow of softly moving trees, they had talked an hour or more.  The scene came back to her as she sat looking into the fire.  She saw the Spring, easily victorious amid the low bushes, capturing the rough branches of the elms one by one, and the distant slopes of the park, grey like a piece of faded tapestry.  And as in a tapestry, the ducks came through the mist in long, pulsing flight, and when the day cleared the pea fowl were seen across the water, sunning themselves on the high branches.  While watching the spectacle of the Spring, Owen had talked to Evelyn about herself, and now their entire conversation floated back, transposed into a higher key.

“I want your life to be a great success.”

“Do you think anyone’s life can be that?”

“That is a long discussion; if we seek the bottom of things, none is less futile than another.  But what passes for success, wealth and renown, are easily within your reach....  If it be too much trouble to raise your hand, let me shake the branches, and they’ll fall into your lap.”

“I wonder if they would seem as precious to me when I had got them as they do now.  Once I did not know what it was to despond, but I lost my pupils last winter, and everything seemed hopeless.  I am not vain or egotistic; I do not pine for applause and wealth, but I should like to sing....  I’ve heard so much about my voice that I’m curious to know what people will think of it.”

“Once I was afraid that you were without ambition, and were content to live unknown, a little suburban legend, a suburban might-have-been.”

“That was long ago....  I’ve been thinking about myself a great deal lately.  Something seems always crying within me, ’You’re wasting your life; you must become a great singer and shine like a star in the world.’”

“That is the voice of vocation speaking within you, a voice that may not be disobeyed.  It is what the swallows feel when the time for departure has come.”

“Ah, yes, what the swallows feel.”

“A yearning for that which one has never known, for distant places, for the sunshine which instinct tells us we must breathe.”

“Oh, yes, that is it.  I used to feel all that in the afternoons in that ornamental park.  I used to stop in my walk, for I seemed to see far away, to perceive dimly as in a dream, another country.”

“And since I came back have you wished to go away?”

“No ... for you come to see me, and when I go out with you I’m amused.”