“Extraordinary, isn’t it?  Did she say that she regretted leaving the stage?  And what did she say about me?”

Ulick had been expecting this question.

“She hoped you were very well, and that you did not speak unkindly of her.”

“Speak unkindly of her!” and Owen’s thoughts seemed to fade away.

Cigar after cigar, drink after drink, until sleep settled in their eyes, and both went to bed too weary to think of her any more.

But next day Owen remembered that Ulick had not told him if he had driven Evelyn home after the concert, and the fact that he had not mentioned how they had parted was in itself suspicious; and he determined to question Ulick.  But Ulick was seldom in Berkeley Square; he pleaded as his excuse business appointments; he had business appointments all over London; Owen listened to his explanations, and then they talked of other things.  In this way Owen never learnt on what terms Evelyn and Ulick were:  whether she wrote to him, whether they saw each other daily or occasionally.  It was not natural to think that after a dinner and a concert their intimacy should cease as suddenly as it had begun.  No doubt they dined together in restaurants, and they went to concerts.  Every hour which he spent away from Berkeley Square he spent with her ... possibly.  To find out if this were true he would have to follow Ulick, and that he couldn’t do.  He might question him?  No, he couldn’t do that.  And, sitting alone in his study in the evening, for Ulick had gone out after dinner, he asked himself if he could believe that Ulick was with the directors of the opera company.  It was much more likely that he was in the Bayswater flat, trying to persuade Evelyn to return to the stage.  So far he was doing good work, but the only means he had of persuading her was through her senses, by making love to her.  Her senses had kindled for him once, why shouldn’t they kindle again?  It would be a hard struggle between the flesh and the idea, the idea which urged her in one direction, and the flesh which drew her in another.  Which would prevail?  Ulick was young, and Owen knew how her senses flared up, how certain music set her senses on fire and certain literature.  “All alone in that flat,” and the vision becoming suddenly intense he saw Ulick leading her to the piano, and heard the music, and saw her eyes lifted as she had lifted them many times to him—­grey marble eyes, which would never soften for him again.

He had known her for so many years, and thought of her so intensely that every feature of her face could be recalled in its minutest line and expression; not only the general colour of her face, but the whiteness of the forehead, and where the white skin freckled.  How strange it was that freckles should suit her, though they suited no other woman!  And the blue tints under the eyes, he remembered them, and how the blue purpled, the rose red in the cheeks, and the various changes—­the greys in the chin, the blue