down the swirling muddy current, her mother’s face seemed to appear to her.  In some strange way her mother had always seemed more real than her father.  Her father lived on the surface of things, in this life, whereas her mother seemed independent of time and circumstance, a sort of principle, an eternal essence, a spirit which she could often hear speaking to her far down in her heart.  Since she had seen her mother’s portrait, this sensation had come closer; and Evelyn drew back as if she felt the breath of the dead on her face, as if a dead hand had been laid upon hers.  The face she saw was grey, shadowy, unreal, like a ghost; the eyes were especially distinct, her mother seemed aware of her; but though Evelyn sought for it, she could not detect any sign of disapproval in her face.  She looked always like a grey shadow; she moved like a shadow.  Evelyn was often tempted to ask her mother to speak.  Her prayer had always been a doubting, hesitating prayer, perhaps that was why it had not been granted.  But now, sitting in her carriage in a busy thoroughfare, she seemed to see over the brink of life, she seemed to see her mother in a grey land lit with stars.  She recalled Ulick’s tales of evocation, and wondered if it were possible to communicate with her mother.  But even if she could speak with her, she thought that she would shrink from doing so.  She thought of what Ulick had said regarding the gain and loss of soul, how we can allow our soul to dwindle, and how we can increase it until communion with the invisible world is possible.  She felt that it were a presumption to limit life to what we see, and Owen’s argument that ignorance was the cause of belief in ghosts and spirits seemed to her poor indeed.  Man would not have entertained such beliefs for thousands of years if they had been wholly false.

Ulick was coming to-morrow.  But he was going to read through Isolde’s music with her, and she could hardly fail to learn something, to pick up a hint which she might turn to account....  Her conduct had been indiscreet; she had encouraged him to make love to her.  But in this case it did not matter; he was a man who did not care about women, and she recalled all he had said to convince herself on this point.  However this might be, the idea of her falling in love with him was out of the question.  A second lover stripped a woman of every atom of self-esteem, and she glanced into her soul, convinced that she was sincere with herself, sure or almost sure that what she had said expressed her feelings truthfully.  But in spite of her efforts to be sincere, there was a corner of her soul into which she dared not look, and her thoughts drew back as if they feared a lurking beast.