“Dearest, we cannot spend the night driving about London.”

He sighed on his mistress’s shoulder.  She threw his black hair from his forehead.

“There is no hope.  We shall be separated, scattered to different winds.”

“Why do you think that?  How do you know these things, Ulick?”

“Evelyn, in losing you I lose the principle of my life, but you will lose nothing in losing me.  So it is written.  But you are not listening; I am wearying you; you’re clinging to the present, knowing that you will soon lose it.”

She threw herself upon him, and kissed him as if she would annihilate destiny on his lips, and until they reached Park Lane there was no future, only a delirious present for both of them.

“I won’t ask you in; I am tired.  Good-bye, dearest, good-bye.  I’ll write.”

“Remember that my time is short,” and there was a strange accent in his voice which she did not hear till long after.  She had locked herself into the sensual present, and, lulled in happy sensations of gratified sense, she allowed Merat to undress her.  She thought of the soft luxury of her bed, and lay down, her brain full of floating impressions of flowers, music and of love.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

And when Merat called her in the morning, she was dreaming of love.  She turned over, and, closing her eyes, strove to continue her dream, but it fled like moonshine from her memory, and was soon so far distant that she could not even perceive the subject of it.  And she awoke in spite of herself, and sat up in bed sipping her chocolate; and then lay back upon the pillow with Ulick for the inner circle of her thought.  It seemed that she could think of him for hours; the romance of his personality carried her on and on.  At one moment she dwelt on the gold glow in his dark eyes, the paint-like blackness of his hair, and his long thin hands.  At another her fancy liked to evoke his superstitions.  For him the past, present and future were not twain, but one thing.  And every time she saw him, she was more and more interested.  Every time she discovered something new in him—­he did not exist on the surface of things, but deep in himself; and she wondered if she would ever know him.

Her thoughts paused a moment, and then she remembered something he had said.  It had struck her at the time, but now it appeared to her more than ever interesting.  Catholicism, he had said, had not fallen from him—­he had merely learnt that it was only part of the truth; he had gone further, he had raised himself to a higher spirituality.  It was not that he wanted less, but more than Catholicism could give him.  In religion, as in art, there were higher and lower states.  We began by admiring “Faust,” and went on to Wagner, hence to Beethoven and Palestrina.  Catholicism was the spiritual fare of the multitude; there was a closer communion with the divine essence.