“But it is only preparing for another attack,” Evelyn said, and they listened, hearing the wind far away gathering itself like a robber band, determined this time to take the castle by assault.  Every moment it grew louder, till it fell at last with a crash upon the roof.

“But what a fool I am to talk to you about the wind, not having seen you for three months!  Surely there is something else for us to talk about?”

“I would sooner you spoke about the wind, Owen.”

“It is cruel of you to say so, for there is only one subject worth talking about—­yourself.  How can I think of any other?  When I am alone in Berkeley Square I can only think of the idea which came into your head and made a different woman of you.”  Evelyn refrained from saying “And a much better woman,” and Owen went on to tell how the idea had seized her in Pisa.  “Remember, Evelyn, it played you a very ugly trick then.  I’m not sure if I ought to remind you.”

“You mean when you found me sitting on the wall of an olive-garth?  But there was no harm in singing to the peasants.”

“And when I found you in a little chapel on the way to the pine-forest—­the forest in which you met Ulick Dean.  What has become of that young man?”

“I don’t know.  I haven’t heard of him.”

“You once nearly went out of your mind on his account.”

“Because I thought he had killed himself.”

“Or because you thought you wouldn’t be able to resist him?”

Evelyn did not answer, and looking through the rich rooms, unconsciously admiring the gleaming of the red silk hangings in the lamplight, and the appearance of a portrait standing in the midst of its dark background and gold frame, she discovered some of the guests:  two women leaning back in a deep sofa amid cushions confiding to each other the story of somebody’s lover, no doubt; and past them, to the right of a tall pillar, three players looked into the cards, one stood by, and though Owen and Evelyn were thinking of different things they could not help noticing the whiteness of the men’s shirt fronts, and the aigrette sprays in the women’s hair, and the shapely folds of the silken dresses falling across the carpet.

“Not one of these men and women here think as you do; they are satisfied to live.  Why can’t you do the same?”

“I am different from them.”

“But what is there different in you?”

“You don’t think then, Owen, that every one has a destiny?”

“Evelyn, dear, how can you think these things?  We are utterly unimportant; millions and billions of beings have preceded us, billions will succeed us.  So why should it be so important that a woman should be true to her lover?”

“Does it really seem to you an utterly unimportant matter?”