"Yes," she said, "I've seen him. It's all right."
"I'm so glad. I hope you said something in my favour. I don't want him to think me a brute, a villainous seducer, the man who ruined his daughter?"
"No, there was nothing of that kind."
She began at first very gravely, but her natural humour overcame her, and she made him laugh, with her account of her wooing of her father, and the part the new harpsichord had played in their reconciliation delighted him. He was full of pleasant comments, gay and sympathetic; he was interested in her account of Ulick, and said he would like to know him. This pleased her, and looking into Owen's eyes, she wondered if she should ask him to marry her. They talked of their friends, of the performance that night at the opera, and Evelyn thought that perhaps Owen ought not to go there lest he should meet her father, and she remembered that she had only to ask him to marry her in order to make it quite easy for him to meet her father. Every moment she thought she was going to ask him; she determined to introduce the subject in the first pause in the conversation, but when the pause came she didn't or couldn't; her tongue did not seem to obey her. She talked instead things that did not interest either her or him—the general principles of Wagner's music, or some technicality, whether she should insist on the shepherd's song being played on the English horn. At last she felt that she could not continue, so fictitious and strained did the conversation seem to her.
"Are you going already? I've not seen you for four days. We are dining to-morrow at Lady Merrington's."
Owen hoped that she would sing there the three songs which she had just sung so well, but she answered instantly that she did not think she would, that she wanted to sing Ulick's songs. She knew that this second mention of Ulick's name would rouse suspicion; she tried to keep it back, but it escaped her lips. She was sorry, for she did not think that she wished to annoy. She would not stop to lunch, though she could not urge any better reason than that Lady Duckle was waiting for her, and when he wished to kiss her, she turned her head aside; a moody look collected in her eyes, an ugly black resentment gathered in her heart; she was ashamed of herself, for there was nothing to warrant her being so disagreeable, and to pass the matter off, she described herself as being aggressively virtuous that morning.
On her singing nights she dined at half-past five, and the interval after dinner she spent in looking through her part, humming bits of it to herself, but to-day Lady Duckle was quick to remark the score of "Tannhäuser" in her hand. She sat with it on her knees, looking at it only occasionally, for she was thinking how the music would appeal to her father, and how her mother would have sung it. But she had to abandon these vain speculations. She must play the part as she felt it, to tamper with her conception would be to court failure. To please herself was her only chance of pleasing her father; if he did not like her reading of the part, if her singing did not please him, it was very unfortunate, but could not be helped. And when the carriage came to take her to the theatre, she was not sure that she would not be glad to receive a telegram saying that he was prevented from coming. She was very nervous while dressing, and on coming downstairs she stood watching the stage-box where he was sitting. She could distinguish his handsome, grave face through the shadows, and the orchestra was playing that rather rhetorical address to the halls which neither she nor Ulick cared much about. She waited, forgetful of her entrance, and she had to hurry round to the back of the stage.
But the moment the curtain went up, she became the mediæval German princess; her other life fell behind her, and her father was but a little shadow on her brain. Yet he was the inspiration of her acting, and that night the whole theatre consisted for Evelyn of one stage-box. Her eyes never wandered there, but she knew that there sat her ultimate judge, one whom no excess or trick could deceive. He would not judge her by the mere superficial appearance she presented on the stage, by the superficial qualities of her voice or her acting; he would see to the origin of the idea, whence it had sprung, and how it had been developed. He did not know this particular opera, but he knew all music, and would judge it and her not according to the capricious taste of the moment, but in its relation and her relation to the immutable canons of art, from the plain chant to Palestrina, from Palestrina to Bach and Beethoven. Her singing of every phrase would be passed as it were through the long tradition of the centuries; it would not be accepted as an isolated fact, it would be judged good, indifferent or bad, by learned technical comparison. That she was his daughter would weigh not a hair's weight in the scale, and the knowledge of this terrible justice raised her out of herself, detached her more completely from the superficial and the vulgar. She sang and acted as in a dream, hypnotised by her audience, her exaltation steeped in somnambulism and steeped in ecstasy.
The curtain was raised several times, but that night the only applause or censure she was minded to hear awaited her in her dressing-room. She sent her maid out of the room, and waited for some sound of footsteps in the corridor, and at the first sound she rushed to the door and flung it open. It was her father, Merat was bringing him along the corridor, and they stood looking at each other; her clear, nervous eyes were trembling with emotion. His face seemed to tell her that he was pleased; she read upon it the calm exaltation of art, yet she could not however summon sufficient courage to ask him, and they sat down side by side. At last she said—
"Why don't you speak? Aren't you satisfied? Was I so bad?"