s a crystal, and the
purple would not die out of the west until nearly midnight. Evelyn would
have liked to have stayed with him in the twilight, for as the landscape
darkened, his strange figure grew symbolic, and his words, whether by
beauty of verbal expression or the manner with which they were spoken,
seemed to bring the unseen world nearer. The outside world seemed to
slip back, to become subordinate as earth becomes subordinate to the sky
when the stars come. Evelyn felt the life of the flesh in which Owen had
placed her fall from her; it became dissipated; her life rose to the
head, and looking into the mists she seemed to discover the life that
haunts in the dark. It seemed to whisper and beckon her.

Her father was in the music-room when they returned, and at sight of him
she forgot Ulick and his enchantments.

"Father, dear, I am so proud of you." Standing by him, her hand on his
shoulder, she said, "Your choir is wonderful, dear. Palestrina has been
heard in London at last!"

She told him that she had heard the Mass in Rome, but had been
disappointed in the papal choir, and she explained why she preferred his
reading to that of the Roman musician. But he would not be consoled, and
when he mentioned that the altos were out of tune, Ulick looked at
Evelyn.

"Father, dear, Ulick and I have had an argument about the altos. He says
they were wrong in the Kyrie. Were they?"

"Of course they were, but the piano has spoilt your ear. What was I
saying last night?"

He took down a violin to test his daughter's ear, and the results of the
examination were humiliating to her.

According to Mr. Innes, Bach was the last composer who had distinguished
between A sharp and B flat. The very principle of Wagner's music is the
identification of the two notes.

She ran out of the room, saying that she must change her dress, and Mr.
Innes looked at Ulick interrogatively. He seemed a little confused, and
hoped he had not hurt her feelings, and Ulick assured him that
to-morrow she would tell the incident in the theatre, that she would be
the first to see the humour of it. The news that she was staying at
Dowlands, and the presumption that she would sing at the concert, had
brought many a priest from St. Joseph's, and all the painters, men of
letters, and designers of stained glass, and all the old pupils, the
viol players, and the madrigal singers, and when Evelyn came downstairs
in her pink frock, she was surrounded by h