“I waited by his bedside seeing the soul prepare for departure.  The soul begins to leave the body several days before it goes; it flies round and round like a bird that is going to some distant country.  I must tell you all about it, Mother.  He lay for hours and hours looking into a corner of the room.  I am sure he saw something there; and one night I heard him call me.  I went to him and asked him what he wanted; but he lay quiet, looking into the corner of the room, and then he said, ‘The wall has been taken away,’ I know he saw something there.  He saw something, he learnt something in that last moment that we do not know.  That last moment is the only real moment of our lives, the only true moment—­all the rest is falsehood, delirium, froth.  The rest of life is contradictions, distractions, and lies, but in the moment before death I am sure everything becomes quite clear to us.  Then we learn what we are.  We do not know ourselves until then.  If I ask who am I, what am I, there is no answer.  We do not believe in ourselves because we do not know who we are; we do not know enough of ourselves to believe in anything.  We do not believe; we acquiesce that certain things are so because it is necessary to acquiesce, but we do not believe in anything, not even that we are going to die, for if we did we should live for death, and not for life.”

“Your father’s death has been a great grief to you; only time will help you to recover yourself.”

“Recover myself?  But I shall never recover, no, Mother, never, never, never!”

The Prioress asked when Mr. Innes had died.

“I can’t remember, Mother; some time ago.”

The Prioress asked if he were dead a week.

“Oh, more than that, more than that.”

“And you have been in Rome ever since?  Why did you not come here at once?”

“Why, indeed, did I not come here?” was all Evelyn could say.  She seemed to lose all recollection, or at all events she had no wish to speak, and sat silent, brooding.  “Of what is she thinking?” the Prioress asked herself, “or is she thinking of anything?  She seems lost in a great terror, some sin committed.  If she were to confess to me.  Perhaps confession would relieve her.”  And the Prioress tried to lead Evelyn into some account of herself, but Evelyn could only say, “I am done for, Mother, I am done for!” She repeated these words without even asking the Prioress to say no more:  it seemed to her impossible to give utterance to the terror in her soul.  What could have happened to her?”

“Did you meet, my child, either of the men whom you spoke to me of?”

The question only provoked a more intense agony of grief.

“Mother, Mother, Mother!” she cried, “I am done for! let me go, let me leave you.”

“But, my child, you can’t leave us to-night, it is too late.  Why should you leave us at all?”

“Why did I ever leave you?  But, Mother, don’t let us talk any more about it.  I know myself; no one can tell me anything about myself; it is all clear to me, all clear to me from the beginning; and now, and now, and now—­”