It was not less definite, this sense or quality which was missing in Evelyn, because it was indefinable; one could not know another person, whether man or woman, without knowing whether it was there or not, and indeed almost everybody was possessed of it. Philip had it to a notable degree--indeed it was that which, if she searched her heart, had in its extraordinary abundance in him made her originally accept the possibility of her becoming his wife. It had nothing to do with the ardour of love, since the man for whom she alone had experienced that had nothing of it. Nor was it brilliant in any way, since all that was his also. Only it was bed-rock; it was something quite secure and responsible, and willing to take all responsibility, and human. It co-existed with dulness, it existed in people who were frankly intolerable. It was probably bourgeois, but she felt the possibility, as yet far off, so far off that she would only strain her eyes if she tried to focus them on it, of its being necessary, just as food and drink were necessary. The little ghost at Le Touquet, in fact, had apparently begged its way across, and had established itself in the King's Road. But ghosts of this kind do not mind prosaic surroundings; the discerning reader will perceive they have no need of tapestry or panels, for they are concerned in no way with what is past and ancestral, but with what is alive and knitted into the fabric of the present. But after thus dismissing the question of the accidents and essentials of life with this ill-timed little jest about the champagne, Evelyn quite suddenly returned to a matter as serious. "You called me undeveloped just now," he said, "and I expect you are right in a way that you did not think. Tom Merivale told me once that I had not the rudiments of a conscience, and I have often thought of that, and believe it is quite true. That is where I am really undeveloped, and I expect it is that"--and his face lit up even more with this piece of intuition--"I expect it is that which you miss in me. He also said I had no depth. You miss that too, probably."