had avoided making women unhappy.  But much more than in morals his conscience found expression in art.  That Evelyn should use her voice except for the interpretation of masterpieces would shock him quite as much as an elopement would shock the worthy Fathers of St. Joseph’s.  He smiled at his thoughts, and remembered that it was through fear of not making a woman happy that he had not married.  He hated unhappiness.  His wish had always been to see people happy.  Was not that why he wished to go away with Evelyn?  A particularly foolish woman had once told him that she liked going out hunting because she liked to see people amused....  He did not pretend to such altruism as hers, and he remembered how he used to watch for her at the window as she came across the square with her dog.  But Evelyn was quite different.  He could not have her to luncheon or tea, and send her back to her father.  Somehow, it would not seem fair to her.  No; he must break with her, or they must go away together.  Which was it to be?  Mrs. Hartrick had written three times that week!  And there was Lady Lovedale.  She had promised to come to tea on Friday.  Was he going to renounce the list, or was he going to put all his eggs in one basket?  The list promised much agreeable intercourse, but it was wholly lacking in unexpectedness.  He had been through it all before, and knew how each story would end.  In mutual indifference or in a tiff because he wearied of accompanying her to all racecourses and all theatres.  Another would pretend that her husband was jealous, and that she daren’t come to see him any more.  But Evelyn would be quite different.  In her case, he could not see further than driving to Charing Cross and getting into the mail train for Paris.  She was worth the list, not a doubt of it.  If he were only sure that he loved her, he would not hesitate.  He was interested in her, he admired her, but did he love her?  A genuine passion alone would make an elopement excusable.

One of his moralities was that a man who did not love his mistress was a beast, and that a man who loved a woman who wasn’t, was a fool.  Another was that although every man of the world knew a liaison would not last for ever, he should not begin one unless it seemed as if it were going to.  In other words, you should not be able to see the end before you began.  But he had never even kissed Evelyn, and it was impossible even to guess, even approximately, if you were going to like a girl before you had kissed her.  There could be no harm in kissing her.  Then, if he was sure he loved her, they might go away together.  Of course, there were hypocrites who would say that he had seduced her, that he had ruined her, robbed Mr. Innes of his only daughter.  But he was not concerned with conventional, but with real morality.  If he did not go away with her, what would happen?  He had told her the truth in the park that morning, and he believed every word he had said....  If she did not leave her father she would learn to hate