not kiss her, and the truth was
not spoken.

"Lady Duckle is still at Homburg, is she not?" he asked, but he was
thinking of the inexplicable event each had been in the other's life.
They had wandered thus far, now their paths divided, for nothing
endures. That is the sadness, the incurable sadness! He was getting too
old for her; in a few more years he would be fifty. But he had hoped
that this friendship would continue to the end of the chapter. And while
he was thinking these things, Evelyn was telling him that Lady Duckle
had met Lady Mersey at Homburg, and had gone on with her to Lucerne,
where they hoped to meet Lady Ascott.

"You are going to shoot with Lord Ascott next month?" she said, and
looking at him she wondered if their relations were after all no more
than a chance meeting and parting. While he spoke of Lord Ascott's
pheasant shooting, she felt that whatever happened neither could divorce
the other from his or her faults.

"How beautiful the park is now, I like the view from your windows. I
like this hour; a sense of resignation is in the air."

"Yes," she said, "the sky is beautifully calm," and she experienced a
return of old tendernesses, and she had no scruple, for he did not make
love to her, and did not kiss her until he rose to leave. Then he kissed
her on the forehead and on the cheek, and refrained from asking if they
were reconciled.

Never had he been nicer than he had been that afternoon, and she dared
not look into her heart, for she did not wish to think that she would
send him away. Why should she send him away? why not the other? She
could not answer this question; she only knew that the choice had fallen
upon Owen. She must send him away, but what reasons should she give? She
felt that her conduct that afternoon had rendered a complete rupture in
their relations more difficult than ever. It was as she lay sleepless in
bed long after midnight that the solution of the difficulty suddenly
sounded in her brain. She must write to him saying that he might come to
see her once more, but that it must be for the last time. This was the
way out of her difficulty, and she turned over in her bed, feeling she
might now get to sleep. But instead of sleep there began the very words
of this last interview, and her brain teemed with different plans for
escape from her lover. She saw herself on ocean steamers, in desert
isles, and riding wild horses through mountain passes. Barred doors,
changes of