Awaking from his reverie, he raised himself from the mantelpiece against which he was leaning.  Never had he thought so brilliantly, and he regretted that no magical stenographer should be there to register his thoughts as they passed.  But they were gone....  Resuming his position against the mantelpiece, he continued his interrupted train of thoughts.

There would be the priest’s interdiction ... unless, indeed, he could win Evelyn to agnosticism.  In his own case he could imagine a sort of religious agnosticism.  But is a woman capable of such a serene contemplation and comprehension of the mystery, which perforce we must admit envelops us, and which often seems charged with murmurs, recollections and warnings of the under world?  Does not woman need the grosser aid of dogma to raise her sensual nature out of complete abjection?  But all this was very metaphysical.  The probability was that Evelyn would lead the life of the ordinary prima donna until she was fifty, that she would then retire to a suburb in receipt of a handsome income, and having nothing to do, she would begin to think again of the state of her soul.  The line of her chin deflected; some would call it a weak chin, but he had observed the same in men of genius—­her father, for instance.  None could be more resolute than he in the pursuance of his ideas.  The mother’s thin, stubborn mouth must find expression somewhere in her daughter.  But where?  Evelyn’s mouth was thin and it drooped at the ends....  But she was only twenty; at five-and-twenty, at thirty, she might be possessed by new ideas, new passions....  The moment we look into life and examine the weft a little, what a mystery it becomes, how occult the design, and out of what impenetrable darkness the shuttle passes, weaving a strange pattern, harmonious in a way, and yet deducible to none of our laws!  This little adventure, the little fact of his becoming Evelyn’s lover, was sown with every eventuality....  If, instead of his winning her to agnosticism, she should win him to Rome!  They then would have to separate or marry, otherwise they would burn in hell for ever.

But he would never be fool enough as to accept such a story as that again.  That God should concern himself at all in our affairs was strange enough, that he should do so seemed little creditable to him, but that he should manage us to the extent of the mere registration of a cohabitation in the parish books was—.  Owen flung out his arms in an admirable gesture of despair, and crossed the room.  After a while he returned to the fireplace calmer, and he considered the question anew.  By no means did he deny the existence of conscience; his own was particularly exact on certain points.  In money matters he believed himself to be absolutely straight.  He had never even sold a friend a horse knowing it to be unsound; and he had always avoided—­no, not making love to his friends’ wives (to whose wives are you to make love if not to your friends’?)—­he