ummy. It was a large emerald set in plain gold. A man who had been
present at the unswathing of this princess, dead at least three thousand
years, had managed to secure it, and Owen had paid him a large sum for
it. She put it on her finger, and decided to keep a dozen other rings,
the earrings she wore, and a few bracelets. The rest of her jewellery
she would sell, if Owen refused to have them back. Of course there would
be her teaching; she could not live in Dulwich doing nothing, and would
take up her mother's singing classes....

Her mother had lost her voice in the middle of her career, and her
daughter had abandoned the stage at the moment of her greatest triumph!
Looking at her jewels scattered all over the bed, Evelyn wondered what
was going to happen to her. Was she really going to leave the stage?
She--Evelyn Innes? When she thought of it, it seemed impossible. If
religion were only a craze. If she were to go back to Owen, or to other
lovers? How strange it was; it seemed strange to be herself, and yet it
was quite true. Remembering that on Sunday she would partake of the Body
and Blood which her Saviour had given for the salvation of sinners, her
soul suddenly hushed, and catching sight of the jewels which symbolised
the sacrifice she was making, it seemed to her that she could afford
much greater sacrifices for what she was going to receive....

She saw lights dying down in the distance, and the world which had once
seemed so desirable seemed to her strangely trivial and easily denied.
Already she could look back at the poor struggling ones, struggling for
what to-morrow will be abandoned, forgotten, passing illusions; and she
wondered how it was that she had not always thought as she thought
to-day. Her thoughts passed into reveries, and she awoke, remembering
that Monsignor had told her that he did not like her living alone in
Park Lane. But in Dulwich she would be with her father, whom she had
long neglected, and she would be near St. Joseph's and her confessor. At
the same moment she remembered that she could not write to her lovers
from Park Lane. She put her jewels back in the safe, and told Merat to
pack sufficient things for a month, and to follow her with them to
Dulwich. Merat asked for more precise instruction, but Evelyn said she
must use her good sense; she was going away at once, and Merat must
follow by a later train.

"Then Mademoiselle does not want the carriage?"

"No, I shall go by train