“How you used to hang round my neck and listen with eager nervous eyes.  You always had the genius of exaltation.  You were wonderful; I watched you, I understood you, I appreciated you; you were a marvellous jewel I had found, and of which I was excessively proud.  I hardly lived at all for myself.  You were my life; my life lived in you.  Every time I went to see you, every appointment was a thrill, a wonder, a mystery.  But it was not until you took me back after that separation at Florence that I sank into the depths of love.  Then I became like a diver in the deep sea.  What I had known before were but the shallows of passion.  What I felt after Florence was the translucid calm of the ocean’s depth.  I lived in the light of an inner consciousness, seeing you always, your face always before me, and my whole being held in a rapt devotion, a self-sufficiency, an exaltation beyond the reach of words.  Oh, Evelyn, I have been extraordinarily in love.  But all this is nothing to you; it even bores you.”

“No, Owen, no, but you don’t understand.”

The desire to tell him the truth came up in her throat, but the moment she sought to express it in words it became untruth, and it was to save herself from falsehood that she remained silent.

“I knew my mistake, but the temptation was irresistible.  I wanted so to tell you that I loved you.  I could not deny myself, effusion, tears, aspiration.  I gained two very wonderful years, and so I lost you.  I wonder if any lover would have the courage to forswear these joys so that he might retain his mistress?  Would any mistress be worthy of the sacrifice?  ‘Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.’”

“Owen, dear, you’re very cruel.  Why do you speak like that?  I shall never cease to love you.  Owen, dear, you don’t hate me?” she said, turning towards him.

The silence was intense.  It seemed to enter her ears and eyes like water or fire, and with dim sight and a dissolution of personal control of her body, she was moved towards him, and without any sort of thrill of desire she was drawn, almost thrown at his feet.

She accepted his kisses wearily.  There was a strange look in her eyes which he could not interpret, and she could not confide her secret, and there was an inexpressible sadness in these last kisses, and Owen’s heart seemed to stand still when he said,—­

“Her last wish was our marriage; she would be glad if she could see us.”

Evelyn hid her face on his shoulders several times.  He thought she was weeping, but her eyes remained dry.  He came to her room that evening, and now that they were lovers again, it seemed to him impossible that she could refuse to marry him.  But she stood looking at him, absorbed, in the presence of her future life, her eyes full of a strange farewell.  He could extort no words from her, and her eyes retained their strange melancholy till her departure; his last memory of her visit was their melancholy.