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"Well, if that is so, Owen—and I won't say you are utterly wrong—why can't you accept things as they are?"

"But it isn't true, Evelyn? You will outlive this idea. You will be cured."

"I hope not."

"You hope not? Well, if you don't wish to be cured it will be difficult to cure you. But now, here in this house, where everything is different, do you not feel the love of life (p. 019) coming back upon you? And can you accept negation willingly as your fate?"

Evelyn asked Owen what he meant and he said:

"Well, your creed is a negative one—that no man shall ever take you in his arms again, saying, 'Darling, I am so fond of you!' You would have me believe that you will be true to this creed? But don't I know how dear that moment is to you? No, you will not always think as you do now; you will wake up as from a nightmare, you will wake up."

"Do you think I shall?" Soon after their talk drifted to Lady Ascott and to her guests, and Owen narrated the latest intrigues and the mistakes Lady Ascott had been guilty of by putting So-and-so and So-and-so to sleep in the same corridor, not knowing that their liaison had been broken off at least three months before.