But in her waking there was a consciousness, a foreboding of a nameless dread, of a heavy weight upon her, and when the foreboding in her ears grew louder, she seemed to know that an irreparable calamity had happened, and trying to fathom it, she saw the wall-paper, and it told her she was in her own room.  She seemed to be trying to read something on it, but what she was trying to read and understand seemed to move away, and her brain laboured in anxious pursuit.  Her eyes opened, and she remembered her interview with Owen.  She had sent him away, she understood it all now, she had sent Owen away!  She had told him that Ulick was her lover, so even if he were to come back it never could be the same as it was.  Why had she told him about Ulick?  It was bad enough to send him away, but she had degraded his memory of her, and the thought that she had not deceived him, but had told him what he otherwise might never have known, did not console her just then.  She lay quite still, face to face with, seeing as it were into the eyes of the Irreparable.  Never again would a man hold her in his arms, saying, “Darling, I am very fond of you!” Take love out of her life, and what barrenness, what weariness!  After all, she was only seven-and-twenty, and the thought came upon her that she might have waited until she was a little older.  The word “never” rang in her ears, and she realised as she had not done before all that a lover meant to her—­romance, adventure, the brilliancy and sparkle of life.  What was life without the delightful excitement of the chase, the delicious doubts regarding the hidden significance of every look and word, then the rapture of the final abandonment?  She tried to think that the life she proposed to relinquish had not brought her happiness, but she could not put back memory of the enchanting days she had spent with her lovers.  Oh, the intense hours of anticipation! and the wonderful recollections! rich and red as the heart of a flower!  Such rapture seemed to her to be worth the remorse that came after, and the peace of mind that a chaste life would secure, a poor recompense for dreary days and months.  She realised the length and the colour of the time—­grey week after grey week, blank month after blank month, void year after void year!  And she always getting a little older, getting older in a drab, lifeless time, in a lifeless life, a weary life filled with intolerable craving!  She had endured it once, a feeling as if she wanted to go mad....  She picked up her letters.

Among the letters she received that morning was one from Ulick.  He was still in Paris, and would not be back for another week or ten days.  He had been lonely, he had missed her, and looked forward to their meeting.  He told her about the opera, the people he had met, and what they had said about his music.  But the tender affection of his letter was not to her mind.  Why did he not say that he longed to take her in his arms and kiss her on the lips?  Knitting her brows, she tried to think