She looked round the room, dreading and half believing in some diabolic influence at her elbow, but perceiving nothing, an ungovernable impulse took her, and her steps strayed to the door, in the desire and almost in the intention of going to London.  But if she went there, how would she explain her visit?...  Owen would understand; but if he were not in, she could not wait until he came in.  She paused to consider the look of pleasure that would come upon his face when he came in and found her there.  There would be just one look, and they would throw themselves into each other’s arms.  She was about to rush away, having forgotten all else but him, when she remembered her father.  If she were to go now she must leave a letter for him explaining—­telling him the story.  And who would play the viola da gamba at his concerts? and there would be no one to see that he had his meals.

Was she or was she not going away with Owen to Paris on Thursday night?  The agonising question continued at every moment to present itself.  Whatever she was doing or saying, she was always conscious of it, and as the time drew near, with every hour, it seemed to approach and menace her.  She seemed to feel it beating like a neuralgic pain behind her eyes; and though she laughed and talked a great deal, her father noticed that her animation was strained and nervous, and he noticed, too, that in no part of their conversation was she ever entirely with him, and he wondered what were the sights and scenes he faintly discerned in her changing eyes.

On getting up on Wednesday morning, she remembered that the best train from Dulwich was at three o’clock, and she asked herself why she had thought of this train, and that she should have thought of it seemed to her like an omen.  Her father sat opposite, looking at her across the table.  It was all so clear in her mind that she was ashamed to sit thinking these things, for thinking as clearly as she was thinking seemed equivalent to accomplishment; and the difference between what she thought and what she said was so repulsive to her that she was on the point of flinging herself at his feet several times.

There were times when the temptation seemed to have left her, when she smiled at her own weakness and folly; and having reproved herself sufficiently, she thought of other things.  It seemed to her extraordinary why she should argue and trouble about a thing which she really had no intention of doing.  But at that moment her heart told her that this was not so, that she would go to meet Owen in Berkeley Square, and she was again taken with an extraordinary inward trembling.

Our actions obey an unknown law, implicit in ourselves, but which does not conform to our logic.  So we very often succeed in proving to ourselves that a certain course is the proper one for us to follow, in preference to another course, but, when it comes for us to act, we do not act as we intended, and we ascribe the discrepancy between what we think and what we do to a deficiency of will power.  Man dares not admit that he acts according to his instincts, that his instincts are his destiny.