XIV

“Mr. Dean left this morning, Sir Owen.”

The butler was about to add, “He left about an hour ago, in plenty of time to catch his train,” but guessing Sir Owen’s humour from his silence, he said nothing, and left the footman to attend on him.

“So he has persuaded her to go away with him. ...  I wonder—­” And Owen began to think if he should go to Ayrdale Mansions himself to find out.  But if she had not gone away with Ulick, and if he should meet her in the street, how embarrassing it would be!  Of what should he speak to her?  Of the intrigue she had been carrying on with Ulick Dean?  Should he pretend that he knew nothing of it?  She would be ashamed of this renewal of her affection for Ulick, though she had not gone away with him; and if she had not gone, it would be only on account of Monsignor.  He sat irresolute, his thoughts dropping away into remembrances of the day before—­the two sitting together under the lime-trees.  That was the unendurable bitterness; it was easy to forgive her Ulick, he was nothing compared to this deliberate soiling of the past.  If she could not have avoided the park, she might have avoided certain corners sacred to the memory of their love-story—­the groves of limes facing the Serpentine being especially sacred to his memory.

“But only man remembers; woman is the grosser animal.”  And in his armchair Owen meditated on the coarseness of the female mind, always careless of detail, even seeming to take pleasure in overlaying the past with the present.  “A mistake,” he thought.  “We should look upon every episode as a picture, and each should hang in a place so carefully appointed that none should do injury to another.  But few of us pay any regard to the hanging of our lives—­women none at all.  The canvases are hooked anywhere, any place will suffice, no matter whether they are hung straight or crooked; and a great many are left on the floor, their faces turned to the wall; and some are hidden away in cellars, where no memory ever reaches them.  Poor canvases!” And then, his thoughts reverting suddenly to his proposed visit to Ayrdale Mansions, he asked himself what answer he could give if he were asked to explain Ulick’s presence at Berkeley Square—­proofs of his approval of Ulick’s courtship; his motives would be misunderstood.  Never again would his love of her be believed in.

“I have been a fool—­one always is a fool, and acts wrongly, when one acts unselfishly.  Self is our one guide—­when we abandon self, we abandon the rudder.”

He would have just been content to keep Evelyn as his friend, and she would have been willing to remain friends with him if he did not talk against religion, or annoy her by making love to her.  “There is a time for everything,” and he thought of his age.  Passionate love should melt into friendship, and her friendship he might have had if he had thought only of himself; it would have been a worthy crown for the love he had borne for her during so many years.  Now there was nothing left for him but a nasty sour rind of life to chew to the end—­it was under his teeth, and it was sour enough, and it never would grow less sour.  His sadness grew so deep that he forgot himself in it, and was awakened by the sound of wheels.