Sister Teresa. George Moore

said, "if you'll only put on a pair of stays and dress yourself and come downstairs, perhaps somebody will care for you."

      A writer upon economic subjects who trailed a black lock of hair over a bald skull declared he could see the scene in Beatrice's bedroom quite clearly, and he spoke of her woolly poodle looking on, trying to understand what it was all about, and his allusion to the poodle made everybody laugh, for some reason not very apparent, and Evelyn wondered at the difference between the people she was now among and those she had left—the nuns in their convent at the edge of Wimbledon Common, and her thoughts passing back, she remembered the afternoon in the Savoy Hotel spent among her fellow-artists.

      Her reverie endured, she did not know how long; only that she was awakened from it by Lady Ascott, come to tell her it was time to go upstairs to dress for dinner. Now with whom would she go down? With Owen, of course, such was the etiquette in houses like Thornton Grange. It was possible Lady Ascott might look upon them as married people and send her down with somebody else—one of those young men! No! The young men would be reserved for the girls. As she suspected, she went down with Owen. He did not tell her where he had been since she last saw him; intimate conversation was impossible amid a glitter of silver dishes and anecdotes of people they knew; but after dinner in a quiet corner she would hear his story. And as soon as the men came up from the dining-room Owen went straight towards her, and she followed him out of hearing of the card-players.

      "At last we are alone. My gracious! how I've looked forward to this little talk with you, all through that long dinner, and the formal talk with the men afterwards, listening to infernal politics and still more infernal hunting. You didn't expect to meet me, did you?"

      "No; Lady Ascott said nothing about your being here when she came to the concert."

      "And perhaps you wouldn't have come if you had known I was here?"

      "Is that why you didn't come to the concert?"

      "Well, Evelyn, I suppose it was. You'll forgive me the trickery, won't you?" She took his hand and held it for a moment. "That touch of your hand means more to me than anything in the world." A cloud came into her face which he saw and it pained him to see it. "Lady Ascott wrote saying she intended to ask you to Thornton Grange, so I wrote at once asking her if she could put me up; she guessed an estrangement, and being a kind woman, was anxious to put it right."

      "An estrangement, Owen? But there is no estrangement between us?"

      "No estrangement?"

      "Well, no, Owen, not what I should call an estrangement."

      "But you sent me away, saying I shouldn't see you for three months.

       Now three months have passed—haven't I been obedient?"

      "Have three months passed?"

      "Yes; It was in August you sent me away and now we are in November."

      "Three months all but a fortnight."

      "The last time I saw you was the day you went to Wimbledon to sing for the nuns. They have captured you; you are still singing for them."

      "You mustn't say a word against the nuns," and she told anecdotes about the convent which interested her, but which provoked him even to saying under his breath, "Miserable folk!"

      "I won't allow you to speak like that against my friends."

      Owen apologised, saying they had taken her from him. "And you can't expect me to sympathise with people or with an idea that has done this? It wouldn't be human, and I don't think you would like me any better if I did—now would you, Evelyn? Can you say that you would, honestly, hand upon your heart?—if a heart is beating there still."

      "A heart is beating—"

      "I mean if a human heart is beating."

      "It seems to me, Owen, I am just as human, more human than ever, only it is a different kind of humanity."

      "Pedantry doesn't suit women, nor does cruelty; cruelty suits no one and you were very cruel when we parted."

      "Yes, I suppose I was, and it is always wrong to be cruel. But I had to send you away; if I hadn't I should have been late for the concert. You don't realise, Owen, you can't realise—" And as she said those words her face seemed to freeze, and Owen thought of the idea within her turning her to ice.

      "The wind! Isn't it uncanny? You don't know the glen? One of the most beautiful in Scotland." And he spoke of the tall pines at the end of it, the finest he had ever seen, and hoped that not many would be blown down during the night. "Such a storm as this only happens once in ten years. Good God, listen!" Like a savage beast the wind seemed to skulk, and to crouch. … It sprang forward and seized the house and shook it. Then it died away, and there was stillness for a few minutes.

      "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?"

      "Not nearly so important as losing the woman one loves." And looking into her face as he might into a book, written in a language only a few words of which he understood, he continued: "And the idea seems to have absorbed you, to have made its own of you; it isn't religion, I don't think you are a religious woman. You usen't to be like this when I took you away to Paris. You were in love with me, but not half so much in love with me as you are now with this idea, not so subjugated.