him.  It was terrible to think of, but it was so, and nothing could change it.  He tried to recall his exact words, and easily imagined her father stricken with remorse, and Evelyn looking across the table, hating him in spite of herself.  But if he could persuade her to leave him for two years he would engage to bring her back a great singer.  And what an interest it would be to watch the development of that voice, surely the most beautiful soprano he had ever heard!  She might begin with “Margaret” and “Norma,” if she liked, for in singing these popular operas she would acquire the whole of her voice, and also the great reputation which should precede and herald the final stage of her career.  “Isolde,” “Brunnhilde,” “Kundry,” Wagner’s finest works, had remained unsung—­they en merely howled.  Evelyn should be the first to sing them.  His eyes glowed with subdued passion as he thought of an afternoon, some three years hence, in the great theatre planned by the master himself, when he should see her rush in as the Witch Kundry.  The marvellous evocation of Arabia flashed upon him....  Would he ever hear her sing it?...  Yes, if she would consent to go away with him he would hear her sing it.  But would she go away with him?  Her love of her father, and her religion, might prevent her....  She might not even care for him....  She might be thinking of marrying him.  Was it possible that she was such a fool!  What good would it do her to marry him?  She could not go on the stage as Lady Asher.  Lady Asher as Kundry!  Could anything be more grotesque?  How beset life was with difficulties!  Without her vocation she was no longer the Evelyn Innes he was in love with....  Someone else, a pretty, interesting girl, the daughter of a suburban organist.  To marry her now would be to ruin her.  But he might marry her five or six years hence, for there was no reason why she should continue singing “Isolde” and “Brunnhilde” till she had no shred of voice left.  When she had established a standard she would have achieved her mission, then it would be for others to maintain the standard.  In the full blaze of her glory she might become Lady Asher.  He would have to end his life somehow, that way as well as another.  Five years are a long while—­anything might happen.  She might leave him for someone else ... anything—­anything—­anything might happen.  It was impossible to divine the turn human lives would take.  The simple fact of his elopement contained a dozen different stories in germ.  Each would find opportunities of development; they would struggle for mastery; which would succeed?...  Keep women you couldn’t; he had long ago found out that.  Marry them, and they came to hate the way you walked across the room; remain their lover, and they jilted you at the end of six months.  He had hardly ever heard of a liaison lasting more than a year or eighteen months, and Evelyn would meet all the nicest men in Europe.  All Europe would be his rival—­really it would be better