"You think, then, that if you had lived the life of a real actress, working your way up from the bottom, what has happened wouldn't have happened; is that what you mean?"
"It is impossible for me to answer you. One would have to live one's life over again."
"I suppose no one will ever know how much depends upon the gift we bring into the world with us, and how much upon circumstances," and Owen compared the gift to the father's seed and circumstances to the mother's womb.
"So you are quite determined?" And they philosophised as they went, on life and its meaning, on death and love, admiring the temples which an eighteenth-century generation had built on the hillsides. "Here are eight pillars on either side and four at either end, serving no purpose whatever, not even shelter from the rain. Never again in this world will people build things for mere beauty," Owen said, and they passed into the depths of the wood, discovering another temple, and in it a lad and lass.
"You see these temples do serve for something. Why are we not lovers?" And they passed on again, Owen's heart filled with his sorrow and Evelyn's with her determination.
She was leaving by the one train, and when they got back to the house the carriage was waiting for her.
"Good-bye, Owen."
"Am I not to see you again?"
"Yes, you will see me one of these days."
"And that was all the promise she could make me," he said, rushing into Lady Ascott's boudoir, disturbing her in the midst of her letters. "So ends a liaison which has lasted for more than ten years. Good God, had I known that she would have spoken to me like this when I saw her in Dulwich!"