ment known, but not while
she was on the stage. But when he mentioned this, she said she did not
see why their engagement should be kept a secret. It did not matter
much; he was quite ready to give way, but he could not understand why
the remark should have angered her. And her obstinacy frightened him not
a little. If he were to find a different woman in his wife from the
woman he had loved in the opera singer!

"Evelyn, you have lived with me in spite of your scruples for the last
six years; why should we not go on for one more year? When you have sung
Kundry, we can be married."

"Owen, do you think you want to marry me? Is not your offer mere
chivalry? _Noblesse oblige_?"

That he was still master of the situation caused a delicious pride to
mount to his head. For a moment he could not answer, then he asked if
she were sure that she had not come to care for someone else, and
feeling this to be ineffective, he added--

"I've always noticed that when women change their affections, they
become a prey to scruples of conscience."

"If I cared for anyone else, should I come to you to-night and offer to
marry you?"

"You're a strange woman; it would not surprise me if the reason why you
wish to be married is because you're afraid of a second lover. That
would be very like you."

His words startled her in the very bottom of her soul; she had not
thought of such a thing, but now he mentioned it, she was not sure that
he had not guessed rightly.

How well he understood one side of her nature; how he failed to
understand the other! It was this want in him that made marriage between
them impossible. She smiled mysteriously, for she was thinking how far
and how near he had always been.

"Tell me, Evelyn, tell me truly, is it on account of religious scruples,
or is it because you are afraid of falling in love with Ulick Dean, that
you came here to-night and asked me to marry you?"

"Owen, we can live in contradiction to our theories, but not in
contradiction to our feelings, and you know that my life has always
seemed to me fundamentally wrong."

For a moment he seemed to understand, but his egotism intervened, and a
moment after he understood nothing, except that for some stupid morality
she was about to break her artistic career sharp off.

He strove to think what was passing behind that forehead. He tried to
read her soul in the rounded temples, the bright, nervous eyes. His and
her understanding of life and th