Her father was vaguely conscious of some change in his daughter, and when one day he heard her singing “Faust,” he was perplexed; and when she argued that it was a beautiful and human aspiration, he looked at her as if he had never seen her before.  He asked her how she had come to think such a thing, and was perplexed by her embarrassments.  She was sorry for her liking for Gounod’s melodies.  It seemed to alienate them; they seemed to have drifted apart.  She saw a silently widening distance, as if two ships were moving away.  One day he asked her if she were going to communion next Sunday.  She answered that she did not think so, and sat thinking a long while, for she had become suddenly aware that she was not as pious as she used to be.  She did not think that Owen’s arguments had touched her faith, but she no longer felt the same interest in religion; and in thinking over this change, which seemed so independent of her own will, she grew pensive and perplexed.  Her melancholy was a sort of voluptuous meditation.  She was conscious all the while of Owen’s presence.  It was as if he were standing by her, and she felt that he must be thinking of her.

He had often spoken of going away with her; she had smiled plaintively, never regarding an elopement as possible.  But one evening her father had gone to dine with a certain Roman prelate who believed in the advantage to the Catholic Church of a musical reformation.  And she had gone to meet Owen, who had driven from London.  They had walked two hours in the lanes, and when she got home she ran to her room and undressed hurriedly, thinking how delightful it would be to lie awake in the dark and remember it all.  And feeling the cool sheets about her she folded her arms and abandoned herself to every recollection.  Her imagination, heightened as by a drug, enabled her to see the white, dusty road and the sickly, yellow moon rising through the branches.  Again she was standing by him, her arms were on his neck; again they stood looking into the vague distance, seeing the broken paling in the moonlight.  There were his eyes and hands and lips to think about, and when she had exhausted these memories, others sprang upon her.  It was in the very centre of her being that she was thinking of the moment when she had spied his horse’s head over the hill top.  She had recognised his silhouette against the sky.  He had whipped up the horse, he had thrown the reins to the groom, he had sprung from the step.  The evening was then lighted by the sunset, and as the sky darkened, their love had seemed to grow brighter.  In comparison with this last meeting, all past meetings seemed shadowy and unreal.  She had never loved him before, and if her smile had dwindled when he asked her to come away with him, she had liked to hear him say the dogcart was waiting at the inn.  But when they stood by the stile where cattle were breathing softly, and the moon shone over the sheepfold like a shepherd’s lantern, her love had grown