o see people off, nor down to piers to wave handkerchiefs,
nor do I go to funerals. Those who indulge their grief do so because
their grief is not very deep. I cannot go to London to bid you
goodbye unless you promise to see me in the convent. Worse than a
death-bed goodbye would be the goodbye I should bid you, and it,
too, would be for eternity. But say I can go to see you in the
convent, and I will come to London to see you.

"Yours,

"OWEN."

* * * * *

"MY DEAR OWEN,--You have written me a beautiful letter. Not one word
of it would I have unwritten, and it is a very great grief to me
that I cannot write you a letter which would please you as much as
your letter pleases me. No woman, since the world began, has had
such a lover as I have had, and yet I am putting him aside. What a
strange fatality! Yet I cannot do otherwise. But there is
consolation for me in the thought that you understand; had it been
otherwise, it would have been difficult for me to bear it. You know
I am not acting selfishly, but because I cannot do otherwise. I have
been through a great deal, Owen, more, perhaps, even than you can
imagine. That night! But we must not speak of it, we must not speak
of it! Rest is required, avoidance of all agitation--that is what
the doctor says, and it agitates me to write this letter. But it must
be done. To see you, to say goodbye to you, would be an agitation
which neither of us could bear, we should both burst into tears; and
for you to come to see me in the convent would be another agitation
which must be avoided. The Prioress would not allow me to see you
alone, if she allowed me to see you at all. No, Owen, don't come to
see me either in London or in the convent. Leave me to work out my
destiny as best I can. In three or four months perhaps I shall have
recovered. Until then,

"Yours ever,

"EVELYN."

XVII

In a letter to Monsignor, Evelyn wrote:

"I have just sent a letter to my father, in which I tell him, amid
many hopes of a safe arrival in Rome, not unduly tired, and with all
the dear instruments intact, unharmed by rough hands of porters and
Custom House officers, that, one of these days, in three or four
months, when I am well, I look forward to contributing the _viola da
gamba_ part of a sonata to the concert of the old instrumental music
which he will give when he has put his choir in order: you know I
used to play that instrument in my young days.