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 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
mistake 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.
"Jim is now in love with Constance."
"How very horrible!"
"Horrible? It is that fellow Mostyn who has put these ideas into your
head!"
"He has put nothing into my head, Owen.
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