Her hand lay on her knees.  He knew that he should not take it, but it lay on her knees so plaintively, that in spite of all his resistance he took it and examined it.  It did not strike him as a particularly beautiful hand.  It was long and white, and exceedingly flexible.  It was large, and the finger-tips were pointed.  The palms curved voluptuously, but the slender fingers closed and opened with a virile movement which suggested active and spontaneous impulses.  In taking her hand and caressing it, he knew he was prejudicing his chances of escape, and fearing the hand he held in his might never let him go again, he said—­

“If your destiny should be to play the viola da gamba in Dulwich, and mine to set forth again on my trip round the world.”

In an instant, in a rapid succession of scenes, the horrible winter she had spent in Dulwich passed before her eyes.  She saw herself stopping at the corner of a street, and looking at a certain tree and the slope of a certain house, and asking herself if her life would go on for ever, if there would be no change.  She saw herself star-gazing, with daffodils for offerings in her hands; and the memory of the hungry hours when she waited for her father to come home to dinner was so vivid, that she thought she felt the same wearying pain and the exhausting yearning behind her eyes, and that feeling as if she wanted to go mad.  No; she could not endure it again, and she cried plaintively, falling slightly forward—­

“Owen, don’t make things more difficult than they are.  Why is it wrong for me to go away with you?  I don’t do any harm to anyone.  God is merciful after all.”

“If I were to marry you, you could not go on the stage; you would have to live at Riversdale and look after your children.”

“But I don’t want children.  I want to sing.”

“And I want you to sing.  No one but husbands have children, exception the stage and in novels.”

“It would be much more exciting to run away together, than to be married by the Vicar.  It is very wicked to say these things.  It is you who make me wicked.”

A mist blinded her eyes, and a sickness seemed instilled in her very blood, and in a dubious faintness she was conscious of his lips.  He hardly heard the words he uttered, so loud was the clatter of his thoughts, and he seemed to see the trail of his destiny unwinding itself from the distaff in the hands of Fate.  He was frightened, and an impulse strove to force him to his feet, and hence, with a rapid good-bye, to the door.  But instead, he leaned forth his hands, he sought her, but she shrank away, and turning her face from him, she said—­

“Owen, you must not kiss me.”

Again he might choose between sailing the Medusa in search of adventure, or crossing the Channel in the mail packet in search of art.

“Will you come away with me?” he said.  His heart sank, and he thought of the Rubicon.