"But you must not delay to go abroad and study."
"Tell me, do you think the concerts will ever pay?"
"No, not in the sense of your requirements. Evelyn, since you ask me, I
must speak the truth. Those concerts may come to pay their expenses,
with a little over, but it is the veriest delusion to imagine that they
will bring enough money to take you and your father abroad. Moreover,
your father would have to resign his position at St. Joseph's, where he
is required; there his mission is. It is painful for me to tell you
these things, but I cannot see you waste your life."
"What you say is quite true.... I've known it all along."
"Only you have shut your eyes to it."
"Yes, that's it."
"Don't look so frightened, Evelyn. It was better that you should be
brought face to face with the truth. You'll have to go abroad and
study."
"And my father! Don't advise me to leave him. I couldn't do that."
"Why make my task more difficult than it is? I wish to be honest. I
should speak just the same, believe me, if your father were present. Is
not our first duty towards ourselves? The rest is vague and uncertain,
the development of our own faculties is, after all, that which is most
sure.... I'm uttering no paradox when I say that we serve others best by
considering our own interests. Let us suppose that you sacrifice
yourself, that you dedicate your life to your father, that you do all
that conventional morality says you should do. You look after his house,
you sing at his concerts, you give music lessons. Ten, fifteen years
pass, and then, remembering what might have been, but what is no longer
possible, you forgive him, and he, overcome with remorse for the wrong
he did you, sinks into the grave broken-hearted."
"I should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I had done my
duty."
"Words, Evelyn, words. Take your life into your keeping, go abroad and
study, come back a great success."
"He would never forgive me."
"You do not think so.... Evelyn, you do not believe that."
"But even if I wished to leave home, I could not. Where should I get the
money? You have not thought what it would cost."
"Have you forgotten the knight that came to release the sleeping beauty
of the woods from her bondage? Fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds
would be ample. I can easily afford it."
"But I cannot afford to accept it. Father would not allow me."
"You can pay it all back."
"Yes, I could do that. But why don't you offer to help father instead?"
"Why are you what you are? Why am I interested in you?"
"If I went abroad to study, I should not see you again for a long
while--two years."
"I could go to Paris."
She did not remember what answer she had made, if she had made any
answer, but as she leaned forward and stirred the fire, she saw his
hands, their strength and comeliness, the kindliness of his eyes. She
was not sure that he was fond of, but she thought that she could make
him like her. At that moment he seemed to take her in his arms and kiss
her, and the illusion was so vivid that she was taken in an instant's
swoon, and shuddered through her entire flesh. When her thoughts
returned she found herself thinking of a volume of verses which had come
to be mentioned as they walked through the Gardens. He had told her of
the author, a Persian poet who had lived in a rose-garden a thousand
years ago. He had compared life to a rose, an exquisite flower to be
caught in the hand and enjoyed for a passionate moment, and had recited
many of the verses, and she had listened, enchanted by the rapid
interchange of sorrow, and gladness, and lofty resignation before the
inevitable. Often it seemed as if her own soul were speaking in the
verses. "So do not refuse to accept the flowers and fruit that hang in
reach of your hands, for to-morrow you may be where there are none....
The caravan will have reached the nothing it set out from.... Surely the
potter will not toss to hell the pots he marred in the making." She
started from her reverie, and suddenly grew aware of his very words,
"However we may strive to catch a glimpse of to-morrow, we must fall
back on to-day as the only solid ground we have to stand on, though it
be slipping momentarily from under our feet." She recalled the
intonation of his sigh as he spoke of the inscrutable nature of things,
and she wondered if he, too, with all his friends and possessions, was
unhappy. She seemed to have exhausted her thoughts about him, and in the
silence of her mind, her self came up for consideration.... Owen
intended to ask her to go away with him; but he did not intend to marry
her. It was shocking to think that he could be so wicked, and then with
a thrill of pleasure that it would be much more exciting to run away
with him than to be married to him by Father Railston. But how very
wicked of her to think such things, and she was frightened to find that
she could not think differently; and with sensations of an elopement
clattering in her brain, she sat still striving to restrain her
thoughts.