she had
remained in her convent? The thought seemed odiously selfish. If she
were to read his disappointment on hearing that she was no longer in
the convent? ... Telepathy! There were instances! And his thoughts
drifted away, and he seemed to lose consciousness of everything,
until he was awakened by the butler bringing back her reply.

Now he would see her in twenty-four hours, and hear from her lips a
story of adventure, for it is an adventure to renounce the world, the
greatest, unless a return to the world be a greater. She had known
both; and it would be interesting to hear her tell both stories--if
she could tell her stories; she might only be half aware of their
interest and importance.

"God only knows what she is like now! A wreck, a poor derelict woman,
with no life to call her own. The life of an actress which I gave
her, and which was so beautiful, wrecked; and the life of a nun,
which she insisted on striving after, wrecked." A cold, blighting
sorrow like a mist came up, it seemed to penetrate to his very bones,
and he asked why she had left the convent--of what use could she be
out of it?... only to torment him again. Twenty times during the
course of the evening and the next morning he resolved not to go to
see her, and as many times a sudden desire to see her ripped up his
resolution; and he ordered the brougham. "Five years' indulgence in
vigils and abstinences, superstitions must have made a great change
in her; utterly unlike the Evelyn Innes whom I discovered years ago
in Dulwich, the beautiful pagan girl whom I took away to Paris." He
was convinced. But anxious to impugn his conviction, he took her
letter from his pocket, and in it discovered traces, which cheered
him, of the old Evelyn.

"She must have suffered terribly on finding herself obliged after
five years to retreat, and something of the original spirit was
required for her to fight her way out, for, of course, she was
opposed at every moment."

The little stations went by one by one: the train stopped nine or ten
times before it reached the penultimate.

"In the next few minutes I shall see her. She is sure to come to the
station to meet me. If she doesn't I'll go back--what an end that
would be! A strange neighbourhood to choose. Why did she come here?
With whom is she living? In a few minutes I shall know."

The train began to slacken speed. "Why, there she is on the
platform." The train rushed by her, the first-class carriages