d be a sufficient argument that they cannot
be the futilities that Owen would argue them to be--not them, he only
protested against one.... (She had not thought of that before--Owen was
no more rational than she.) That the idea of chastity should persist in
spite of reason is proof of its truth. For what more valid argument in
favour of a chaste life than that the instinct of chastity abides in us?
After all, what we feel to be true is for us the greatest truth, if not
the only real truth. Ulick was nearer the truth than Owen. He had said,
"A sense which eludes all the other senses and which is not
apprehensible to reason governs the world, all the rest is
circumstantial, ephemeral. Were man stripped one by one of all his
attributes, his intelligence, his knowledge, his industry, as each of
these shunks was broken up and thrown aside, the kernel about which they
had gathered would be a moral sense."

Evelyn remembered that when she had sent Owen away before, he had said,
"Sexual continence at best is not the whole of morality; from your use
of the word one would think that it was." But for her the sexual
conscience was the entire conscience--she had no temptation to steal.
There was lying, but she was never tempted to tell lies except for one
reason; she could not think of herself telling a lie for any other. To
her the sexual sin included all the others. She turned her head aside,
for the bitterness of her conscience was unendurable, and she vowed
that, whatever happened, she would speak the truth if Owen questioned
her again. She could never bring herself to tell such horrible
falsehoods again.

These revulsions of feeling alternated with remembrances of Owen's
tenderness; fugitive sensations of him tingled in her veins, and
ill-disposed her to Ulick. She spoke little, and sat with averted eyes.
When he asked her if he should come to her room, she answered him
peremptorily; and he heard her lock her door with a determined hand.

As she lay in bed, conscious of the inextricable tangle of her life, it
was knotting so closely and rapidly that her present double life could
not endure much longer, the odious taste of the lies she had told that
afternoon rose again to her lips, and, as if to quench the bitterness,
she vowed that she would tell Owen the truth ... if he asked her. If he
did not ask her she would have to bear the burden of her lies. She tried
not to wish that he might ask her. Then questions sallied from eve