“Evelyn!”

“Oh, it is you, Owen.  So you have come to see me.  You are always kind.”

“My dear Evelyn, there never can be any question of kindness between you and me.  You will always be Evelyn, and I am only thinking now of how glad I am to have found you again.”

“Found me again!” And her thoughts seemed to float away, her mind not being strong enough yet to think connectedly.  “How did you hear about me?” Before he could answer she said, “I suppose Ulick—­” And then, with an effort to remember, she added, “Yes, Merat told me he had come here,” and the effort seemed to fatigue her.

“Perhaps it would be better if you didn’t talk.”

“Oh, no,” she said, taking his hand, detaining it for a moment and then losing it; “tell me.”

And he told her, speaking very gently so that his voice might not tire her, that Ulick had called at Berkeley Square.

“He told me you weren’t going away with him.”

A slight shudder passed through Evelyn’s face, and she asked, “Where is Ulick?”

“He has gone away.  If he had stayed he would have lost his post as secretary to the opera company.”

Evelyn did not appear to hear the explanation, and it was some time before she said: 

“He has gone away.  I don’t think we shall see much of him again, either you or I, Owen.”

Owen did not resist asking if she regretted this, and she answered that she did not regret it at all.  “And now you understand, Owen, what kind of woman I am; how hopeless everything is.”  In spite of herself, a little trace of her old wit returning to her, she added, “You see what an unfortunate man you are in your choice of a mistress.”

Owen could not answer; and a moment after he remembered that it is only those who feel as deeply as Evelyn who can speak as lightly, otherwise they would not be able to resist the strain; and the strain was a very terrible one, he could see that, for she turned over in bed, and a little later he perceived that she had been crying.  Turning suddenly, she exclaimed: 

“Owen, Owen, I am very frightened!”

“Frightened of what, dear one?”

“I don’t know, Owen, I can’t tell you; but I am very frightened, for he seems not to be very far away and may come again.”

“And who is ’he’?”

“It is impossible to tell you—­a darkness, a shadow that seems always by me, and who was very near me last night.  A little more chloral and I should not be here talking to you!”

“It is terrible, Evelyn, terrible!  And how should I have lived?”

“You lived before me and you will live after me.  Suicide is a mortal sin, so Monsignor would tell me.  We are forbidden to kill ourselves even to escape sin, and that seems strange; for how shall I ever believe that God would not have forgiven me, that he would not have preferred me to kill myself than to have—?” And her voice died away, Owen wondered whether for lack of strength or unwillingness to express herself in words.