eyes full of a strange farewell.
He could extort no words from her, and her eyes retained their strange
melancholy till her departure; his last memory of her visit was their
melancholy.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The forces within her were at truce. She was conscious of a suspension
of hostilities. The moment was one in which she saw, as in a mirror, her
poor, vague little soul in its hopeless wandering through life. She drew
back, not daring to see herself, and then was drawn forward by a febrile
curiosity. She felt towards them so differently that she could not think
of herself as the same person when she was with Owen as she was when she
was with Ulick. She remembered what she had heard the "dresser" say, and
she remembered the sin. But apart from the deception she practised upon
both men, there was the wrong-doing. Her conscience did not assail her
now; but she knew that she would suffer to-morrow or next day. That
sense of sin which she could not obliterate from her nature would rise
to her lips like a salt wave, and poison her life with its bitterness,
and she asked herself vain questions: Why had she left her father? Why
had she two lovers? Why did she rise to seek things that made her
unhappy? She thought of yesterday's journey to see a dying woman, and of
to-night's performance of "Tristan and Isolde." What an unhappy,
maddening jingle. The bitter wave of conscience, which rose to her lips
and poisoned her taste, forced from her an avowal that she would mend
her life. She foresaw nothing but deception, and easily imagined that
not a day would pass without lies. All her life would be a lie, and when
her nature rose in vehement revolt, she looked round for means to free
herself from the fetters and chains in which she had locked herself.
Thinking of Owen, she vowed that it must not happen again. But what
excuse would she give? Should she tell him that Ulick was her lover?
That was the only way, only it seemed so brutal. Even so she would have
a lover; and strictly speaking, she ought to send them both away. Very
probably that is what she would do in the end.... In the meantime, she
would keep them both on! Her face contracted in an expression of terror
and disgust. Had her moralising, then, ended in such miserable
selfishness as this?

To escape from her thoughts she looked out at the landscape, hoping it
would distract her. But she could take no interest in it. Yesterday it
had seemed so beautiful, but to-d