He felt that he ought to stay with her, and at the same time he felt that she was right; that his intervention would be unavailing, for the struggle resided in herself.  But if she should learn from Sir Owen to forget him; if he were to lose her altogether; if she should never return?  The thought of such a calamity was the rudest blow of all, and the possibility of her going away for a time, shocking as it was, seemed almost light beside it.  He struggled against these thoughts, for he hated and was ashamed of them.  They came into his mind unasked, and he hoped that they represented nothing of his real feeling.  Suddenly his face changed, he remembered his passion for her mother.  He had suffered what Evelyn was suffering now.  She had divined it by some instinct; true, they were very much like each other.  Nothing would have kept him from Gertrude.  But all that was so long ago.  Good God!  It was not the same thing, and at the very same moment he regretted that it was not a music lesson he was going to, for an appointment with Monsignor introduced a personal interest, and if he were not to stay by her, it would seem that he was indifferent to what became of her.

“No, Evelyn, I shan’t go; I will stay here, I will stay by you.”

“But I don’t know that I am going away with Sir Owen.”

“You said just now that you were.”

“Did I say so?  Father, you must keep your appointment with Monsignor, and you must say nothing to Owen if you should meet him; you promise me that?  It rests with me, father, it is all in the heart.”

He stood looking at her, twisting his beard into a point, and while she wondered whether he would go or stay, she admired the delicacy of his hand.

“Think of the disgrace you will bring upon me, and just at the time, too, when Monsignor is beginning to see that a really great choir in London—­

“Then, father, you do think that my going away will prejudice him against you?”

“I don’t say that.  I mean that this time seems less—­Of course you cannot go.  It is very shocking that we should be discussing the subject together.”

A sudden fortitude came upon her, and a sudden desire to sacrifice herself to her father.

“Then, father, I shall stay.  I will do nothing that will interfere with your work.”

“My dearest child, it is not for me—­it is yourself—­”

She threw herself into his arms, begging him to forgive her.  She wanted to stay with him.  She loved him better than her voice, better than anything in the world.  He did not answer, and when she raised her eyes she caught a slight look of doubt upon his face, and wondered what it could mean.  At the very moment she had determined to stay with him, and forfeit her love and her art for his sake, a keen sense of his responsibility towards her was borne in upon him, and the feeling within him crushed like a stone that he could never do anything for her, nor anything