Old age, always a terror, becomes in an affair of this
kind a special terror, for there is no hope; she will never go back
to him, so I might as well get her. If I don't, Monsignor will"; and
a smile appeared again on his face, for he had begun to feel that he
would succeed in persuading Evelyn to accept the engagement, and to
do that would mean taking him on as a lover.
When he lighted a cigar the conviction was borne in upon him, as the
phrase goes, that to travel in an opera company without a mistress
would be unendurable.... Where could he get one equal to Evelyn?
Nowhere. No one in the company was comparable to her; and of course
he loved her, and she loved him: differently, in some strange way he
feared, but still she loved him, or was attracted to him--it did not
matter which so long as he could succeed in persuading her to accept
the engagement which his directors were most anxious to conclude. As
they walked through Kensington Gardens that afternoon he had noticed
how she had begun to talk suddenly on the question whether it would
be permissible for a woman in certain circumstances to take a second
lover, if her life with her first were entirely broken, and so on.
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