ad, Owen."

"Upon my word I believe you're right. It is none of his doing. But he
has got the harvesting; ah, yes, and the nuns, too. You never loved
me as you love this idea, Evelyn?"

"Do you think not?"

"When you were studying music in Paris you were quite willing I
should go away for a year."

"But I repaid you for it afterwards; you can't say I didn't. There
were ten years in which I loved you. How is it you have never
reproached me before?"

"Why should I? But now I've come to the end of the street; there is a
blank wall in front of me."

"You make me very miserable by talking like this."

They sat without speaking, and Lady Ascott's interruption was
welcome.

"Now, my dear Sir Owen, will you forgive me if I ask Evelyn to sing
for us? You'd like to hear her sing--wouldn't you?"

Owen sprang to his feet.

"Of course, of course. Come, Miss Innes, you will sing for us. I have
been boring you long enough, haven't I? And you'll be glad to get to
the piano. Who will accompany you?"

"You, Sir Owen, if you will be kind enough."

The card-players were glad to lay down their cards and the women to
cease talking of their friends' love affairs. All the world over it
is the same, a soprano voice subjugating all other interests;
soprano or tenor, baritone much less, contralto still less. Many
came forward to thank her, and, a little intoxicated with her
success, she began to talk to some of her women friends, thinking it
unwise to go back into a shadowy corner with Owen, making herself
the subject of remark; for though her love story with Owen Asher had
long ceased to be talked about, a new interest in it had suddenly
sprung up, owing to the fact that she had sent Owen away, and was
thinking of becoming a nun--even to such an extent her visit to the
convent had been exaggerated; and as the women lagging round her had
begun to try to draw from her an account of the motives which had
induced her to leave the stage, and the moment not seeming opportune,
even if it were not ridiculous at any moment to discuss spiritual
endeavour with these women, she determined to draw a red herring
across the trail. She told them that the public were wearying of
Wagner's operas, taste was changing, light opera was coming into
fashion.

"And in light opera I should have no success whatever, so I was
obliged to turn from the stage to the concert-room."

"We thought it was the religious element in Wagner."

A card party had co