The desire to tell him the truth came up in her throat, but the moment she sought to express it in words it became untruth, and it was to save herself from falsehood that she remained silent. "I knew my mistake, but the temptation was irresistible. I wanted so to tell you that I loved you. I could not deny myself, effusion, tears, aspiration. I gained two very wonderful years, and so I lost you. I wonder if any lover would have the courage to forswear these joys so that he might retain his mistress? Would any mistress be worthy of the sacrifice? 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'" "Owen, dear, you're very cruel. Why do you speak like that? I shall never cease to love you. Owen, dear, you don't hate me?" she said, turning towards him. The silence was intense. It seemed to enter her ears and eyes like water or fire, and with dim sight and a dissolution of personal control of her body, she was moved towards him, and without any sort of thrill of desire she was drawn, almost thrown at his feet. She accepted his kisses wearily. There was a strange look in her eyes which he could not interpret, and she could not confide her secret, and there was an inexpressible sadness in these last kisses, and Owen's heart seemed to stand still when he said,-- "Her last wish was our marriage; she would be glad if she could see us." Evelyn hid her face on his shoulders several times. He thought she was weeping, but her eyes remained dry. He came to her room that evening, and now that they were lovers again, it seemed to him impossible that she could refuse to marry him. But she stood looking at him, absorbed, in the presence of her future life, her eyes full of a strange farewell. He could extort no words from her, and her eyes retained their strange melancholy till her departure; his last memory of her visit was their melancholy. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE