“I should at least have the satisfaction of knowing that I had done my duty.”

“Words, Evelyn, words.  Take your life into your keeping, go abroad and study, come back a great success.”

“He would never forgive me.”

“You do not think so....  Evelyn, you do not believe that.”

“But even if I wished to leave home, I could not.  Where should I get the money?  You have not thought what it would cost.”

“Have you forgotten the knight that came to release the sleeping beauty of the woods from her bondage?  Fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds would be ample.  I can easily afford it.”

“But I cannot afford to accept it.  Father would not allow me.”

“You can pay it all back.”

“Yes, I could do that.  But why don’t you offer to help father instead?”

“Why are you what you are?  Why am I interested in you?”

“If I went abroad to study, I should not see you again for a long while—­two years.”

“I could go to Paris.”

She did not remember what answer she had made, if she had made any answer, but as she leaned forward and stirred the fire, she saw his hands, their strength and comeliness, the kindliness of his eyes.  She was not sure that he was fond of, but she thought that she could make him like her.  At that moment he seemed to take her in his arms and kiss her, and the illusion was so vivid that she was taken in an instant’s swoon, and shuddered through her entire flesh.  When her thoughts returned she found herself thinking of a volume of verses which had come to be mentioned as they walked through the Gardens.  He had told her of the author, a Persian poet who had lived in a rose-garden a thousand years ago.  He had compared life to a rose, an exquisite flower to be caught in the hand and enjoyed for a passionate moment, and had recited many of the verses, and she had listened, enchanted by the rapid interchange of sorrow, and gladness, and lofty resignation before the inevitable.  Often it seemed as if her own soul were speaking in the verses.  “So do not refuse to accept the flowers and fruit that hang in reach of your hands, for to-morrow you may be where there are none....  The caravan will have reached the nothing it set out from....  Surely the potter will not toss to hell the pots he marred in the making.”  She started from her reverie, and suddenly grew aware of his very words, “However we may strive to catch a glimpse of to-morrow, we must fall back on to-day as the only solid ground we have to stand on, though it be slipping momentarily from under our feet.”  She recalled the intonation of his sigh as he spoke of the inscrutable nature of things, and she wondered if he, too, with all his friends and possessions, was unhappy.  She seemed to have exhausted her thoughts about him, and in the silence of her mind, her self came up for consideration....  Owen intended to ask her to go away with him; but he did not intend