ter this irritating
incident he felt that he dared not risk it; if anyone were to speak to
him again of his two-year-olds, he felt he would not be able to control
himself. Suddenly he thought of a friend. He must speak to someone....
He need mention no names. He put up his stick and stopped a hansom. A
few minutes took him to Harding's rooms.

The unexpectedness of the visit, and the manner in which Owen strode
about the room, trying to talk of the things that he generally talked
about, while clearly thinking of something quite different, struck
Harding as unusual, and a suspicion of the truth had just begun to dawn
upon him, when, breaking off suddenly, Owen said--

"Swear you'll never speak of what I am going to say--and don't ask for
names."

"I'll tell no one," said Harding, "and the name does not interest me."

"It's this: a woman whom I have known many years--a friendship that I
thought would go on to the end of the chapter--told me to-day that it
was all finished, that she never wanted to see me again."

"A friendship! Were you her lover?"

"What does it matter? Suffice it to say that she was my dearest friend,
and now I have lost her. She has been taken from me," he said, throwing
his arms into the air. It was a superb gesture of despair, and Harding
could not help smiling.

"So Evelyn has left him. I wonder for whom?" Then, with as much sympathy
as he could call into his voice, he asked if the lady had given any
reason for this sudden dismissal.

"Only that she thinks it wrong; we've been discussing it all the
afternoon. It has made me quite ill;" and he dropped into a chair.

Harding knew perfectly well of whom they were speaking, and Owen knew
that he knew, but it seemed more decorous to refrain from mentioning
names, and Evelyn's soul was discussed as if it were an abstract
quantity, and all indication of the individual incarnation was avoided.
Owen admitted that, notwithstanding many seeming contradictory
appearances, Evelyn had always thought it wrong to live with him, and
yet, notwithstanding her being very fond of him, she had never shown any
eagerness to be married. "Of course it is very wrong," she would say in
her own enchanting way, "but a lover is very exciting, and a husband
always seems dull. I don't think you'd be half as nice as a husband as
you are as a lover." The recital of the Florence episode interested
Harding, but it was the opposition of the priest and the musician that
made t