ference between good and evil living. When they
listen the voice is always audible; even those who purposely close their
ears often hear it. For this voice cannot be wholly silenced; it can be
stifled for a while, but it can be no more abolished than the sound of
the sea from the shell. "As a shell, man is murmurous with morality."

Of the rest of the sermon Evelyn heard very little.... It was the phrase
that if we look into our lives we shall find that our most painful
moments are due to our having followed the doctrine of the world instead
of the doctrine of Christ that touched Evelyn. It seemed to explain
things in herself which she had never understood. It told her why she
was not happy. ... Happy she had never been, and she had never
understood why. Because she had been leading a life that was opposed to
what she deemed to be essentially right. How very simple, and yet she
had never quite apprehended it before; she had striven to close her
ears, but she had never succeeded. Why? Because that whisper can be no
more abolished than the murmur of the sea from the shell. How true! That
murmur had never died out of her ears; she had been able to stifle it
for a while--she had never been able to abolish it--and what convincing
proof this was of the existence of God!

Disprove it you couldn't, for it was part of one's senses--the very
evidence on which the materialists rely to prove that beyond this world
there is nothing. Yet what a flagrant contradiction her conduct was to
the murmur of spiritual existence. And that was why she was not happy.
That was why she would never be happy till she reformed.... But the
preacher spoke as if it were easy for all who wished it to change their
lives. How was she to change her life? Her life was settled and
determined for her ever since the day she went away with Owen. If she
sent Owen away again the same thing would happen; she would take him
back. She could not remain on the stage without a lover; she would take
another before a month was out. It was no use for her to deceive
herself! That is what she would do. To sing Isolde and live a chaste
life, she did not believe it to be possible--and she sat helpless,
hearing vaguely the Credo, her attention so distracted that she was only
half aware of its beauty. She noticed that the "Et incarnatus est" was
inadequately rendered, but that she expected. It would require the
strange, immortal voices she had heard in Rome. But the vigour with