Sister Teresa | Page 6

right."
"An estrangement, Owen? But there is no estrangement between us?"
"No estrangement?"
"Well, no, Owen, not what I should call an estrangement."
"But you sent me away, saying I shouldn't see you for three months. Now three months have passed--haven't I been obedient?"
"Have three months passed?"
"Yes; It was in August you sent me away and now we are in November."
"Three months all but a fortnight."
"The last time I saw you was the day you went to Wimbledon to sing for the nuns. They have captured you; you are still singing for them."
"You mustn't say a word against the nuns," and she told anecdotes about the convent which interested her, but which provoked him even to saying under his breath, "Miserable folk!"
"I won't allow you to speak like that against my friends."
Owen apologised, saying they had taken her from him. "And you can't expect me to sympathise with people or with an idea that has done this? It wouldn't be human, and I don't think you would like me any better if I did--now would you, Evelyn? Can you say that you would, honestly, hand upon your heart?--if a heart is beating there still."
"A heart is beating--"
"I mean if a human heart is beating."
"It seems to me, Owen, I am just as human, more human than ever, only it is a different kind of humanity."
"Pedantry doesn't suit women, nor does cruelty; cruelty suits no one and you were very cruel when we parted."
"Yes, I suppose I was, and it is always wrong to be cruel. But I had to send you away; if I hadn't I should have been late for the concert. You don't realise, Owen, you can't realise--" And as she said those words her face seemed to freeze, and Owen thought of the idea within her turning her to ice.
"The wind! Isn't it uncanny? You don't know the glen? One of the most beautiful in Scotland." And he spoke of the tall pines at the end of it, the finest he had ever seen, and hoped that not many would be blown down during the night. "Such a storm as this only happens once in ten years. Good God, listen!" Like a savage beast the wind seemed to skulk, and to crouch.... It sprang forward and seized the house and shook it. Then it died away, and there was stillness for a few minutes.
"But it is only preparing for another attack," Evelyn said, and they listened, hearing the wind far away gathering itself like a robber band, determined this time to take the castle by assault. Every moment it grew louder, till it fell at last with a crash upon the roof.
"But what a fool I am to talk to you about the wind, not having seen you for three months! Surely there is something else for us to talk about?"
"I would sooner you spoke about the wind, Owen."
"It is cruel of you to say so, for there is only one subject worth talking about--yourself. How can I think of any other? When I am alone in Berkeley Square I can only think of the idea which came into your head and made a different woman of you." Evelyn refrained from saying "And a much better woman," and Owen went on to tell how the idea had seized her in Pisa. "Remember, Evelyn, it played you a very ugly trick then. I'm not sure if I ought to remind you."
"You mean when you found me sitting on the wall of an olive-garth? But there was no harm in singing to the peasants."
"And when I found you in a little chapel on the way to the pine-forest--the forest in which you met Ulick Dean. What has become of that young man?"
"I don't know. I haven't heard of him."
"You once nearly went out of your mind on his account."
"Because I thought he had killed himself."
"Or because you thought you wouldn't be able to resist him?"
Evelyn did not answer, and looking through the rich rooms, unconsciously admiring the gleaming of the red silk hangings in the lamplight, and the appearance of a portrait standing in the midst of its dark background and gold frame, she discovered some of the guests: two women leaning back in a deep sofa amid cushions confiding to each other the story of somebody's lover, no doubt; and past them, to the right of a tall pillar, three players looked into the cards, one stood by, and though Owen and Evelyn were thinking of different things they could not help noticing the whiteness of the men's shirt fronts, and the aigrette sprays in the women's hair, and the shapely folds of the silken dresses falling across the carpet.
"Not one of these men and women here think as you do; they are satisfied to live. Why can't you do the same?"
"I