le of last year's leaves communicated a delicious
emotion which seemed to sing in the currents of her blood, and a little
madness danced in her brain at the ordinary sight of nature. "This way,"
she said, and they turned into a lane which almost looked like country.
There were hedges and fields; and the sunlight dozed amid the cows, and
over the branches of the high elm the Spring was already shaking a soft
green dust. There were nests in the bare boughs--whether last year's or
this year's was not certain. Further on there was a stile, and she
thought that she would like to lean upon it and look straight through
the dim fields, gathering the meaning which they seemed to express. She
wondered if Owen felt as she did, if he shared her admiration of the
sunlight which fell about the stile through the woven branches, making
round white spots on the roadway.

"So you were surprised to hear that I had given up my trip round the
world?"

"I was surprised to hear you had given it up so that you might hear me
sing."

"You think a man incapable of giving up anything for a woman?"

He was trembling, and his voice was confused; experience did not alter
him; on the verge of an avowal he was nervous as a schoolboy. He watched
to see if she were moved, but she did not seem to be; he waited for her
to contest the point he had raised, but her reply, which was quite
different, took him aback.

"You say you came back to hear me sing. Was it not for another woman
that you went away?"

"Yes, but how did you know?"

"The woman with the red hair who was at your party?"

The tale of a past love affair often served Owen as a plank of
transition to another. He told her the tale. It seemed to him
extraordinary because it had happened to him, and it seemed to Evelyn
very extraordinary because it was her first experience of the ways of
love.

"Then it was she who got tired of you? Why did she get tired of you?"

"Why anything? Why did she fall in love with me?"

"Is it, then, the same thing?"

He judged it necessary to dissemble, and he advanced the theory which he
always made use of on these occasions--that women were more capricious
than men, that so far as his experience counted for anything, he had
invariably been thrown over. The object of this theory was two-fold. It
impressed his listener with an idea of his fidelity, which was essential
if she were a woman. It also suggested that he had inspired a large
number of caprices, t