ou can't have husbands without marriage,
and if there were no husbands, who would look after our mistresses?" A
lot of hypocrites had chosen to look shocked; Georgina had said it was a
horrid remark and had hardly spoken to him all the evening; and this
afternoon she had said she should not come and see him any more--she was
afraid her husband suspected, her children were growing up, etc. When
women cease to care for one, how importunate their consciences are! A
little terror took him, and he wondered if he were about to lose
Georgina, or if she were only trying to make him jealous. Perhaps he
could not do better than make her jealous. For that purpose this young
girl was just the thing.

Moreover, he was interested in the revival of Palestrina at St.
Joseph's, and he liked Ferrabosco's pavane. He would like to have a
harpsichord; even if he did not play on it much, it would be a
beautiful, characteristic piece of furniture.... And it would be a good
idea to ask Mr. Innes to bring all his queer instruments to Berkeley
Square, and give a concert to-morrow night after his dinner-party. His
friends had bored him with Hungarian bands, and the improvisations the
bands had been improvising for the last ten years, and he saw no reason
why he should not bore them, just for a change, with Mr. Innes.

At this moment his reflections were interrupted by Mr. Innes, who wanted
to know if he did not agree with him regarding the necessity for the
re-introduction of the monochord, if the sixteenth century masses were
ever to be sung again properly. All this was old story to Evelyn. In a
sort of dream, through a sort of mist, she saw the embroidered waistcoat
and the gold moustache, and when the small, grey, smiling eyes were
raised from her father's face and looked at her, a delicious sensation
penetrated through the very tissues of her flesh, and she experienced
the tremor of a decisive moment; and then there came again a gentle
sense of delicious bewilderment and illusion.

She did not know how it would all happen, but her life seemed for the
first time to have come to a definite issue. The very moment he had
spoken of Madame Savelli, the great singing mistress, it was as if a
light had begun in her brain, and she saw a faint horizon line; she
seemed to see Paris from afar; she knew she would go there to study, and
that night she had fallen asleep listening to the applause of three
thousand hands.

But she did not like to stand be