She kissed him.
“But you are simply abominable,” she said.
“Yes, that probably is so. Another thing happened to-day, too. I saw Philip. He was driving to Waterloo. In a hansom. Luggage was behind with his servant in a cab. He didn’t see me; at least if he did, he appeared not to.”
Evelyn paused a moment.
“Poor devil!” he said. “I don’t know how you feel, but I am awfully sorry for him. But how could I help it? Are you a fatalist, Madge?”
“If I am, what then?”
“Nothing; but you’ve got to listen to a little sermon, whether you are or not. It’s dreadful about Philip; you see, he was my friend. But what else was to be done? Wasn’t the whole thing inevitable? How could it have been otherwise but that you and I should be here?”
“Otherwise?” she said, “what otherwise was there? Yet—yet, oh, Evelyn, on what little accidents it all depended. The thunderstorm down in the New Forest, your atrocious——”
“What?”
“Your atrocious behaviour. And then that it was he who asked me to give you one more sitting, and that my mother should have opened my letter! Is life all accidents? Are you and I the prey of any future accidents? May we be marred and maimed by what is as fortuitous as all this?”