he story from his point of view one of the most fascinating he had
ever heard in his life.

They dined together in an old-fashioned club, in a room lighted by wax
candles in silver candlesticks. Tall mirrors in gold frames reflected
the black mahogany furniture. In answer to Owen, who lamented that
Evelyn was sacrificing everything for an idea, Harding spoke, and with
his usual conscious exaltation, of the Christian martyrs, the Spanish
Inquisition, and then Robespierre seemed to him the most striking
example of what men will do for an idea. He mentioned a portrait by
Greuze in which Robespierre appears as a beautiful young man. "Such a
face," he said, "as we might imagine for a lover or a poet, a sort of
Lucien de Rubempre, but in his brain there was a cell containing the
pedantic idea, and for this idea he cut off a thousand heads, and would
have cut off a million. The world must conform to his idea, or it was a
lost world."

Towards the end of dinner, the head waiter interrupted their
conversation. He lingered about the table, anxious to hear something of
Lord Ascott's two-year-olds; but, in the smoking-room over their coffee,
they returned to the more vital question--the sentimental affections.
They were agreed that the pleasure of love is in loving, not in being
loved, and their reasons were incontrovertible.

"It is the letters," said Harding, "that we write at three in the
morning to tell her how enchanting she was; it is the flowers we send,
the words of love that we speak in her ear, that are our undoing. So
long as we are indifferent, they love us."

"Quite true. At first I did not care for her as much as she did for me,
and I noticed that as soon as I began to fall in love--"

"To aspire, to suffer. Maybe there is no deep pleasure in contentment.
In casting you out she has given you a more intense life."

Owen did not seem to understand. His eye wandered, then returning to
Harding, he said--

"We cannot worship and be worshipped; is that what you mean? If so, I
agree with you. But I'd sooner lose her as I have done than not have
told her that I loved her.... There never was anyone like her. Sympathy,
understanding, appreciation and enthusiasm! it was like living in a
dream. Good God! to think that that priest should have got her; that,
after all my teaching, she should think it wrong to have a lover! I
don't know if you know of whom we are speaking. If you suspect, I can't
help it, but don't ask me. I