ou 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 tha