He strove to think what was pa.s.sing behind that forehead. He tried to read her soul in the rounded temples, the bright, nervous eyes. His and her understanding of life and the mystery of life were as wide apart as the earth and the moon, and he could but stare wondering. No inkling of the truth reached him. As he strove to understand her mind he grew irritated, and turned against that shadow religion which had always separated them. Without knowing why--almost in spite of himself--he began to argue with her. He reminded her of her inconsistencies. She had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband. If it had not been for her religion, he did not believe they would have thought of marriage, they would have gone on to the end as they had begun. The sound of his voice entered her ears, but the meaning of the words did not reach her brain, and when she had said that she had come to him not on account of Ulick, but on account of her conscience, she sat perplexed, trying to discover if she had told the truth.

"You're not listening, Evelyn."

"Yes, I am, Owen. You said that I had always said that a lover was much more exciting than a husband."

"If so, why then--"

They stared blankly at each other. Everything had been said. They were engaged to be married. What was the use of further argument? She mentioned that it was getting late, and that Lady Duckle was waiting for her.

"She will tell her first," he thought, "and she'll tell Lady Ascott.

They'll all be talking of it at supper. 'So Owen has gone off at last,'

they'll say. I'll hear of it at the club to-morrow."

"I wonder what Lady Ascott will think?" he said, as he put her into the carriage.

"I don't know.... I shall not go to the ball. Tell him to take me home."

She lay back in the blue shadows of the brougham, striving to come to terms with herself, to arrive at some plain conclusion. It seemed to her that she had been animated by an honest and n.o.ble purpose. She had gone to Owen in the intention of marrying him if he wished to marry her, because it had seemed to her that it was her duty to marry him. But everything had turned out the very opposite of what she had intended, and looking back upon the hour she had spent with him, it seemed to her that she had certainly deceived him. She certainly had deceived herself.

She could not believe that she was going to marry Owen. She felt that it was not to be, and before the presentiment her her soul paused. She asked herself why she felt that it was not to be. There was no reason; but she felt quite clear on the point, and could not combat the clear conviction. She began thinking the obvious drama--Owen discovering her with Ulick, declining ever to see her again, her suicide or his, etc.

But she could not believe that Owen would decline ever to see her again even if--but she was not going to go wrong with Ulick, there was no use supposing such things, And again her thoughts paused, and like things frightened by the dark, withdrew silently, not daring to look further.

She met Ulick every night at the theatre, and she had him to sit with her in her dressing-room during the entr'actes.... She remembered the pleasure she had taken in these conversations, and the strange, whirling impulse which drew them all the while closer, until they dreaded the touching of their knees. She had taken him back in the carriage and he had kissed her; she had allowed him to kiss her the other night, and she knew that if she were alone with him again that she would not be able to resist the temptation. Her thoughts turned a little, and she considered what her life would be if she were to yield to Ulick. Her life would become a series of subterfuges, and in a flash of thought she saw how, after spending the afternoon with Ulick, she would come home to find Owen waiting for her: he would take her in his arms, she would have to free herself, and, feeling his breath upon her cheek, save herself somehow from his kiss. He would suspect and question her. He would say, "Give me your word of honour that Ulick Dean is not your lover;" and she heard herself pledge her word in a lie, and the lie would have to be repeated again and again.

Until she had met Ulick, she had not seen a man for years whose thoughts ranged above the gross pleasure of the moment, the pleasure of eating, of drinking, of love-making ... and she was growing like those people.

The other night at dinner at the Savoy she had looked round the table at the men's faces, some seven or eight, varying in age from twenty-four to forty-eight, and she had said to herself, "Not one of these men has done anything worth doing, not one has even tried." Looking at the men of twenty-four, she had said to herself, "He will do all the man of forty-eight has done,--the same dinners, the same women, the same racecourses, the same shooting, the same tireless search after amus.e.m.e.nt, the same life unlit by any ideal." She was no better, Owen was no better. There was no hope for either of them? He had surrounded her with his friends, and she thought of the invitations ahead of her.

Her profession of an opera singer chained her to this life.... She felt that a miracle would have to happen to extricate her from the social mire into which she was sinking, sinking.

To give up Ulick would only make matters worse. He was the plank she clung to in the shipwreck of all her convictions. She could not tell how or why, but the conviction was overpowering that she could not give him up. Happen what might happen, she must see him. If Owen were to go for a sea voyage.... In three or four months she would have acquired that something which he could give her and which was necessary to complete her soul. She seemed to be quite certain on this point, and she lay back in the brougham lost in vague wonderment. Her thoughts sank still deeper, and thoughts came to her that had never come before, that she had never dared to think before. Even if she were not done with Ulick when Owen returned, it seemed to her that she could make them and herself very happy; they both seemed necessary to her happiness, to her fulfilment; and in her dream, for she was not responsible for her thoughts, the enjoyment of this double love seemed to her natural and beautiful....

But she awoke from her dream frightened, and feeling like one who has lost the clue which was to lead her out of the labyrinth.

Instead of sending the footman to tell Lady Duckle that the carriage was waiting, Evelyn got out and went up to the drawing-room.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, Olive, but I can't go with you.

Tell Lady Ascott I am very sorry. Good-night, I'm going to my room."

"Oh, my dear Evelyn, not going ... and now that you're dressed."

Evelyn allowed herself to be persuaded. If she went to bed now she would not sleep. She went to the ball with Lady Duckle, and as she went round in the lancers, giving her hand first to one and then to the other, she heard a voice crying within her, "Why are you doing these things? They don't interest you at all."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"Eternal night, oh, lovely night, oh, holy night of love." Rapture succeeded rapture, and the souls of the lovers rose, nearer to the surface of life. In a shudder of silver chords he saw them float away like little clouds towards the low rim of the universe.

But at that moment of escape reality broke in upon the dream. Melot had betrayed them, and Ulick heard King Mark's n.o.ble and grave reproaches like a prophecy, "Thou wert my friend and didst deceive me," he sang, and his melancholy motive seemed to echo like a cry along the sh.o.r.e of Ulick's own life. Amid calm and mysteriously exalted melodies, expressive of the terror and pathos of fate fulfilled, Tristan's resolve took shape, and as he fell mortally wounded, the melancholy Mark motive was heard again, and again Ulick asked what meaning it might have for him. He heard the applause, loud in the stalls, growing faint as it rose tier above tier. Baskets of flowers, wreaths and bouquets were thrown from the boxes or handed up from the orchestra, the curtain was rung up again, and her name was called from different parts of the theatre. And when the curtain was down for the last time, he saw her in the middle of the stage talking to Tristan and Brangane. The garden scene was being carried away, and to escape from it Evelyn took Tristan's hand and ran to the spot where Ulick was standing. She loosed the hand of her stage lover, and dropping a bouquet, held out two small hands to Ulick covered with violet powder. The hallucination of the great love scene was still in her eyes; it still, he could see, surged in her blood. She had nearly thrown herself into his arms, seemed regardless of those around; she seemed to have only eyes for him; he heard her say under her breath,"

That music maddens me," then with sudden composure, but looking at him intently, she asked him to come upstairs with her.

For the last few days he had been engaged in prediction, and last night he had been visited by dreams, the significance of which he could not doubt. But his reading of her horoscope had been incomplete, or else he had failed to understand the answers. That he was a momentous event in her life seemed clear, yet all the signs were set against their marriage; but what was happening had been revealed--that he should stand with her in a room where the carpet was blue, and they were there; that the furniture should be of last century, and he examined the cabinets in the corners, which were satinwood inlaid with delicate traceries, and on the walls were many mirrors and gold and mahogany frames.

"Merat!" The maid came from the dressing-room. "You have some friends in front. You can go and sit with them. I sha'n't want you till the end."

When the door closed, their eyes met, and they trembled and were in dread. "Come and sit by me." She indicated his place by her side on the sofa. "We are all alone. Talk to me. How did I sing to-night?"

"Never did the music ever mean so much as it did to-night," he said, sitting down.

"What did it mean?"

"Everything. All the beauty and the woe of existence were in the music to-night."

Their thoughts wandered from the music, and an effort was required to return to it.

"Do you remember," she said, with a little gasp in her voice, "how the music sinks into the slumber motive, 'Hark, beloved;' then he answers, 'Let me die'?"

"Yes, and with the last note the undulating tune of the harps begins in the orchestra. Brangane is heard warning them."

They sat looking at each other. In sheer desperation she said--

"And that last phrase of all, when the souls of the lovers seemed to float away."

"Over the low rim of the universe--like little clouds."

"And then?"

He tried to speak of his ideas, but he could not collect his thoughts, and after a few sentences he said, "I cannot talk of these things."

The room seemed to sway and cloud, and her arms to reach out instinctively to him, and she would have fallen into his arms if he had not suddenly asked her what had been decided at Sir Owen Asher's.

"Let me kiss you, Evelyn," he said, "or I shall go mad."

"No, Ulick, this is not nice of you. I shall not be able to ask you to my room again."

He let go her hand, and she said--

"I'm not going to marry Sir Owen, but I must not let you kiss me."

"But you must, Evelyn, you must."

"Why must I?"

"Do you not feel that it is to be?"

"What is to be?"

"I do not know what, but I have been drawn towards you so long a while--long before I saw you, ever since I heard your name, the moment I saw that old photograph in the music-room, I knew."

"What did you know?"