urmurs,
recollections and warnings of the under world? Does not woman need the
grosser aid of dogma to raise her sensual nature out of complete
abjection? But all this was very metaphysical. The probability was that
Evelyn would lead the life of the ordinary prima donna until she was
fifty, that she would then retire to a suburb in receipt of a handsome
income, and having nothing to do, she would begin to think again of the
state of her soul. The line of her chin deflected; some would call it a
weak chin, but he had observed the same in men of genius--her father,
for instance. None could be more resolute than he in the pursuance of
his ideas. The mother's thin, stubborn mouth must find expression
somewhere in her daughter. But where? Evelyn's mouth was thin and it
drooped at the ends.... But she was only twenty; at five-and-twenty, at
thirty, she might be possessed by new ideas, new passions.... The moment
we look into life and examine the weft a little, what a mystery it
becomes, how occult the design, and out of what impenetrable darkness
the shuttle passes, weaving a strange pattern, harmonious in a way, and
yet deducible to none of our laws! This little adventure, the little
fact of his becoming Evelyn's lover, was sown with every eventuality....
If, instead of his winning her to agnosticism, she should win him to
Rome! They then would have to separate or marry, otherwise they would
burn in hell for ever.

But he would never be fool enough as to accept such a story as that
again. That God should concern himself at all in our affairs was
strange enough, that he should do so seemed little creditable to him,
but that he should manage us to the extent of the mere registration of a
cohabitation in the parish books was--. Owen flung out his arms in an
admirable gesture of despair, and crossed the room. After a while he
returned to the fireplace calmer, and he considered the question anew.
By no means did he deny the existence of conscience; his own was
particularly exact on certain points. In money matters he believed
himself to be absolutely straight. He had never even sold a friend a
horse knowing it to be unsound; and he had always avoided--no, not
making love to his friends' wives (to whose wives are you to make love
if not to your friends'?)--he had avoided making women unhappy. But much
more than in morals his conscience found expression in art. That Evelyn
should use her voice except for the interpretation of maste