“But, Evelyn, my heart is aching so.  How awful the word never, and the years are filled with its echoes.  And the wide ocean which lies outside the harbour is so lonely, and I have no heart for any other joy.  ’May we not meet again?’ my heart cries from time to time; ’may not some propitious storm blow us to the same anchorage again, into the same port?’ Ah, the suns and the seas we shall have sailed through would render us unrecognisable, we should not know each other.  Last night I wandered by the quays, and, watching the constellations, I asked if we were divided for ever, if, when the earth has become part and parcel of the stars, our love will not reappear in some starry affinity, in some stellar friendship.—­Yours,

“ULICK DEAN.”

The symbol of the ships seemed to Evelyn to express the union and the division and the destiny that had overtaken them.  She sat and pondered, and in her vision ships hailed each other as they crossed in mid-ocean.  Ships drew together as they entered a harbour.  Ships separated as they fared forth, their prows set towards different horizons.  She sat absorbed in the mystery of destiny.  Like two ships, they had rested side by side in a casual harbour.  They had loved each other as well as their different destinies had allowed them.  None can do more.  She loved him better—­in a way—­but he was less to her than Owen.  She felt that, and he had felt that....  As he said, if they were to meet again they would not recognise each other, so different were the suns that would shine upon them and the oceans they would travel through.  She understood what he meant, and a prevision of her future life seemed to nicker up in her brain, like the sea seen through a mist; and through vistas in the haze she saw the lonely ocean, and her bark was already putting off from the shore.  All she had known she was leaving behind.  The destiny of ships is the ocean.

Owen’s letter she received in the evening about six o’clock.  She changed colour at the sight of it, and her hand trembled, and she tore the envelope across as she opened it.

“You ask me to make no attempt to save you.  You ask me to stand on the bank while you struggle and are dragged down by the current.  Evelyn, I have never disobeyed your slightest wish before, but I declare my right to use all means to save you from a terrible fate.  I return to London to do so.  God only knows if I shall succeed....  In any case I hope you will never allude again to any money questions.  What I gave, I gave, and unless you want to kill me outright, never speak again of returning my presents.—­As ever,

OWEN ASHER.”