her glory she might become Lady Asher. He
would have to end his life somehow, that way as well as another. Five
years are a long while--anything might happen. She might leave him for
someone else ... anything--anything--anything might happen. It was
impossible to divine the turn human lives would take. The simple fact of
his elopement contained a dozen different stories in germ. Each would
find opportunities of development; they would struggle for mastery;
which would succeed?... Keep women you couldn't; he had long ago found
out that. Marry them, and they came to hate the way you walked across
the room; remain their lover, and they jilted you at the end of six
months. He had hardly ever heard of a _liaison_ lasting more than a year
or eighteen months, and Evelyn would meet all the nicest men in Europe.
All Europe would be his rival--really it would be better to give her
up.... She was the kind of woman who, if she once let herself go, would
play the devil. Turning from the fire he looked into the glass.... He
admitted to eight-and-thirty, he was forty--a very well-preserved forty.
There were times when he did not look more than five-and-thirty. His
hair was paler than it used to be; it was growing a little thin on the
forehead, otherwise he was the same as when he was five-and-twenty. But
he was forty, and a man of forty cannot marry a prima donna of twenty.
Five pleasant years they might have together, five delicious years; it
were vain to expect more. But he would not get her to go away with him
under a promise of marriage; all such deception he held to be as
dishonourable as cheating at cards. So in their next interview it would
have to be suggested that there could be no question of marriage, at
least for the present. At the same time he would have her understand
that he intended to shirk no responsibility. But if he were to tire of
her! That was another possibility, and a hateful one; he would prefer
that she should jilt him. Perhaps it would be better to give her up, and
throw his fate in with the list. But he was tired of country houses,
with or without a _liaison_, and felt that he could not go through
another season's hunting; he had no horses that suited him, and didn't
seem to be able to find any. To go abroad with Evelyn, watch over the
cultivation of her voice, see her fame rising, that was his mission! The
only question to decide was whether he was in love with her. He would
not hesitate a moment if he wer