“EVELYN INNES.”

“P.S.—­In course of conversation with my father, I mentioned inadvertently that you were my lover; I begged him not to be angry with you, but I know that I should not have mentioned your name.  I must ask you to forgive me this too.”

The next day and the day following were lived within herself, sometimes viewing God far away, as if at one end of a great plain, and herself kneeling penitent at the other.  She was filled with thoughts of his infinite goodness and mercy, and of the miraculous intercession of the Virgin at the moment when she was about to commit a crime that would have lost her her soul for ever.  She went to Mass daily, and took peculiar delight in reciting the hymn which Monsignor had given her for a penance.  She regretted it was not more.  It seemed to her such a trivial penance, and she reflected on the blackness of her sins, and the penances which the saints had imposed upon themselves.  But her chief desire was to keep herself pure in thought, and she read pious books when she was alone, and encouraged her mind to dwell on the profound mystery in which she was going to participate, and to believe in the marvellous change it would produce in her.

It was on Friday morning that Agnes handed her Ulick’s letter.  She did not read it at once, it lay on the table while she was dressing, and she was uncertain whether it would not be better to put off reading it until she came back from St. Joseph’s.

“Alas, from our first meeting, and before it, we were aware of the fate which has overtaken us.  We heard it in our hearts, that numb restlessness, that vague disquietude, that prophetic echo which never dies out of ears attuned to the music of destiny ...  Love you less, you who are the source of all joy to me?  Evelyn, my heart aches and my brain is light with grief, but the terrible certitude persists that we are being drawn asunder.  I see you like a ship that has cleared the harbour bar, and is already amid the tumult of the ocean....  We are ships, and the destiny of ships is the ocean, the ocean draws us both:  we have rested as long as may be, we have delayed our departure, but the tide has lifted us from our moorings.  With an agonised heart I watched the sails of your ship go up, and now I see that mine, too, are going aloft, hoisted by invisible hands.  I look back upon the bright days and quiet nights we have rested in this tranquil harbour.  Like ships that have rested a while in a casual harbour, blown hither by storms, we part, drawn apart by the eternal magnetism of the sea.  I would go to you, Evelyn, if I could, and pray you not to leave me.  But you would not hear:  destiny hears no prayers.  In the depths of our consciousness, below the misery of the moment, there lies a certain sense that our ways are different ways, and that we must fare forth alone, whither we know not, over the ocean’s rim; and in this sense of destiny we must find comfort.  Will resignation, which is the highest comfort, come to us in time?  My eyes fall upon my music paper, and at the same time your eyes turn to the crucifix.  Ours is the same adventure, though a different breeze fills the sails, though the prows are set to a different horizon.  God is our quest—­you seek him in dogma, I in art.