ation to disguise the truth.

"I don't know what I shall do, Owen; there would be no use making
promises."

"Then you do love me a little, Evelyn?"

"Yes, Owen, you must never doubt that. I shall always be fond of you;
remember that, whatever happens."

"Yes, I know, as a friend. Look round! the earth and the sky are quiet,
and one day we shall be quiet too, only that is sure."

As they walked towards the house, their self-consciousness rose to so
high a pitch that the park and house seemed to them like a thin
illusion, a sort of painted paper reality, which might fall to pieces
at any moment. He thought how little were the hours between the present
moment and the moment when she would be taken from him. Whereas she was
thinking that these hours would never pass. She realised the long hours
before the sunlight waned. She thought of their lonely dinner and their
evening after it. All that while she would witness his grief for the
love that had gone from her, a love which she could no more give than
she could once withhold. The great green park lay before their eyes,
they strayed through the woods talking of her Isolde. He had not seen
the performance. He had been called away the day she played it, but his
pockets were full of the articles that had been written about her. The
leaves of the beech trees shimmered in the steady sunlight, and they
could see the green park through the drooping branches. She often
detected a sob in his voice, and once, while sitting under a cedar tree
at the edge of the terrace, he had to turn aside to hide his tears, and
the sadness of everything made her sick and ill.

They had tea in the west hall. Owen had ceased to complain, and she had
begun to think that she could not give him up entirely.

The day had passed somehow; dinner was over. Around the green park the
last light of the sunset grew narrower, and the cattle faded
mysteriously into the gathering gloom. Owen held converse with himself,
but with recognition of the fact that he was listened to by the second
subject of his discourse, and that they themselves were his ideas, the
figuration of his teaching, endowed his philosophy with a dramatic
intensity.

"How you used to hang round my neck and listen with eager nervous eyes.
You always had the genius of exaltation. You were wonderful; I watched
you, I understood you, I appreciated you; you were a marvellous jewel I
had found, and of which I was excessively proud. I hardly liv