“But you are not cross with me?  You will come to see me all the same?”

He wondered if she were tortured with as many different and opposing desires as he was.  Perhaps not, and he watched her tender, truthful eyes.  In her truthful nature, filled full of passion and conscience, there was no place for any slightest calculation.  But he was mistrustful, and asked himself if all this resistance was a blind to induce him to marry her.  If he thought that, he would drop her at once.  This suspicion was lost sight of in a sudden lighting of her hair, caused by a slight turning of her head.  Beyond doubt she was a fresh and delicious thing, and if he did not take her, someone else would, and then he would curse his indecision; and if she had a great voice, he would for ever regret he had not taken her when he could get her.  If he did not take her now, the chance was gone for ever.  She was the adventure he had dreamed all his life.  At last it had come to him, perhaps through the sheer force of his desire, and now, should he refrain from the dream, or should he dream it?  He saw the exquisite sensual life that awaited him and her in Paris.  He saw her, pale and pathetic, and thought of her eager eyes and lips.

Evelyn sat crestfallen and repentant, but her melancholy was a pretty, smiling melancholy, and her voice had not quite lost the sparkle and savour of wit.  She regretted her sin, admitted her culpability, and he was forced to admit that sorrow and virtue sat becomingly upon her.  Her mood was in a measure contagious, and he talked gently and gaily about herself, and the day when the world would listen to her with delight and approbation.  But while he talked, he was like a man on the rack.  He was dragged from different sides, and the questioner was at his ear.

Hitherto he had never compromised himself in his relations with women.  As he had often said of himself, he had inspired no great passion, but a multitude of caprices.  But now he had begun to feel that it is one love and not twenty that makes a life memorable, he wished to redeem his life from intrigues, and here was the very chance he was waiting for.  But habit had rendered him cowardly, and this seduction frightened him almost as much as marriage had done.  To go away with her, he felt, was equivalent to marrying her.  His life would never be the same again.  The list would be lost to him for ever, no more lists for him; he would be known as the man who lived with—­lived with whom?  A girl picked up in the suburbs, and sang rather prettily.  If she were a great singer he would not mind, but he could not stand a mediocre singer about whom he would have to talk continual nonsense:  conspiracies that were in continual progress against her at Covent Garden, etc.  He had heard all that sort of thing before....  What should he do?  He must make up his mind.  It might be as well if he were to ask her to come to his house; then in some three or four months he would be able to see if she were worth the great sacrifice he was going to make for her.