and
worldly pleasures, but she was sacrificing all that she liked for all
that she disliked. She wondered, quite unable to account for her choice
to herself. Her life seemed very mad, but, mad or sane, she was going to
sacrifice Owen and her career. She might sing at concerts, but she did
not think such singing would mean much to her and she thought of the
splendid successful life that lay before her if she remained on the
stage. Again she wondered at her choice, seeking in herself the reason
that impelled her to do what she was doing. She could not say that she
liked living with her father in Dulwich, nor did she look forward to
giving singing lessons, and yet that was what she was going to do. She
strove to distinguish her soul; it seemed flying before her like a bird,
making straight for some goal which she could not distinguish. She could
distinguish its wings in the blue air, and then she lost sight of them;
then she caught sight of them again, and they were then no more than a
tremulous sparkle in the air. Suddenly the vision vanished, and she
found herself face to face with herself--her prosaic self which she had
known always, and would know until she ceased to know everything. She
was here in the Wimbledon Convent, and Owen was in London waiting for
her. She knew she never would live with him again. But how would she
finally separate herself from him? How would it all come about? She
could imagine herself yielding, but if she did, it would not last a
week. Her life would be unendurable, and she would have to send him
away. For it is not true that Tannhaeuser goes back to Venus. He who
repents, he who had once felt the ache and remorse of sin, may fall into
sin again, but he quickly extricates himself; his sinning is of no long
duration! It was the casual sin that she dreaded; at the bottom of her
heart she knew that she would never live a life of sin again. But she
trembled at the thought of losing the perfect peace and happiness which
now reigned in her heart, even for a few hours. Her face contracted in
an expression of terror at the thought of finding herself again involved
in the anguish, revolt and despair which she had endured in Park Lane.
She recalled the moments when she saw herself vile and loathsome, when
she had turned from the image of her soul which had been shown to her.
Then, to rid herself of the remembrance, she thought of the joy she had
experienced that morning at hearing in the creed that God'