They were glad of a little silence, and Evelyn sat striving to read her own destiny in the legend.  Bran visited many islands of many delights, but when he wished to return to his native land he was told that he must do no more than to sail along its coast, that if he set foot on any earthly shore he would perish.  But what did this story mean, what meaning had it for her?  She had visited many islands of many delights, and had come home again!  What meaning had this story for her? why had she remembered the last phrase? why had she been impelled to ask Ulick to tell her this story?  She looked at him—­he sat with his eyes on the ground absorbed in thought, but she did not think he was thinking of the legend, but of how soon he would lose her, and she shuddered in the warm summer evening as from a sudden chill.  It was now nearly seven o’clock—­she would soon have to go home to dress for dinner.  They were dining out, she and Lady Duckle, and she would meet once more Lady Ascott, Lady Summersdean, those people whose lives she had begun to feel had no further concern for her.

The hour was inexpressibly calm and alluring; the blue pallor of the sky and the fading of the sunset behind the tall Bayswater houses raised the soul with a tingling sense of exalted happiness and delicious melancholy?  She did not ask herself if she loved Ulick better than Owen; she only knew that she must act as she was acting—­that the moment had not come when she would escape from herself.  They walked by the water’s edge, their souls still like the water, and like it, full of calm reflections.  They were aware of the evening’s sad serenity, and the little struggling passions of their lives.  Very often Nature seemed on the very point of whispering her secret, but it escaped her ears like an echo in the far distance, like a phantom that disappears in the mist.

“Will you come and see me to-morrow?” he asked suddenly.

“We had better not see each other every day,” she said; “still, I don’t see there would be any harm if you came to see me in the afternoon.”

Her conscience drowsed like this heavy, somnolent evening, and a red moon rose behind the tall trees.

“The time will come,” he said, “when you will hate me, Evelyn.”

“I don’t think I shall be as unjust as that.  Good-bye, dear, the afternoon has passed very pleasantly.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Owen had telegraphed to her and she had come at once.  But how callous and unsympathetic she was.  If people knew what she was, no one would speak to her.  If Owen knew that she had desired his mother’s death ...  But had she?  She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale.  As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman’s face, and contrasted it with the summer time.