it
was less aggressive than the colonnade. A sun-lit clearing in a wood and
a water mill raised no moral question. He turned his eyes from the
dancers, but however he resisted them, their frivolous life found its
way into the conversation. They were the wise ones, he said. They lived
for art and love, and what else was there in life? A few sonatas, a few
operas, a few pictures, a few books, and a love story; we had always to
come back to that in the end. He spoke with conviction, his only
insincerity being the alteration of a plural into a singular. But no, he
did not think he had lied; he had spoken what seemed to him the truth at
the present moment. Had he used the singular instead of the plural a
fortnight ago, he would have lied, but within the last week his feelings
for Evelyn had changed. If she had broken with him a week ago, he would
have found easy consolation in the list, but now it was not women, but a
woman that he desired. A mere sexual curiosity, and the artistic desire
to save a beautiful voice from being wasted, had given way to a more
personal emotion in which affection was beginning. Looking at him,
thinking over what he had just said, unable to stifle the hope that
those women in the picture were the wise ones, she heard life calling
her. The art call and the love call, subtly interwoven, were modulated
now on the violins now on the flutes of an invisible orchestra. At the
same moment his immeshed senses, like greedy fish, swam hither and
thither, perplexed and terrified, finding no way of escape, and he
dreaded lest he had lost his balance and fallen into the net he had cast
so often. He had begun to see that she was afraid of the sin, and not at
all of him. She had never asked him if he would always love her--that
she seemed to take for granted--and he had, or fancied he had, begun to
feel that he would never cease to love her. He looked into the future
far enough to see that it would be she who would tire of him, and that
another would appear two or three years hence who would appeal to her
sensual imagination just as he did to-day. She would strive to resist
it, she would argue with herself, but the enticing illusion would draw
her as in a silken net. He was now engaged in the destruction of her
moral scruples--in other words, making the way easy for his successor.

They were in the gallery alone, and, taking her hand, he considered in
detail the trouble this _liaison_ would bring in its train. He