arying a little of all the visible
world, beginning to hunger for the invisible, from which she had closed
her eyes so long, but which, for all that, had never become wholly
darkened to her.

Hearing Ulick speak of foreseeing and divinations by the stars was, too,
like sweet rain in a dying land; and as they returned to Dowlands, she
spoke to him of Moy Mell where Boadag is king, of the Plain of the Ever
Living, of Connla and the Fairy Maiden gliding in the crystal boat over
the Western Sea, and during dinner she longed to ask him if he believed
in a future life.

It was difficult for her, who had never spoken on such subjects before,
to disentangle his philosophy, and it was not until he said that we
must not believe as religionists do, that one day the invisible shall
become the visible, that she began to understand him. Such doctrine, he
said, is paltry and materialistic, worthy of the theologian and the
agnostic. We must rather, he said, seek to raise and purify our natures,
so that we may see more of the spiritual element which resides in
things, and which is visible to all in a greater or less degree as they
put aside their grosser nature and attain step by step to a higher point
of vision. She had always imagined there was nothing between the
materialism of Owen and the theology of Monsignor. Ulick's ideas were
quite new to her; they appealed to her imagination, and she thought she
could listen for ever, and was disappointed when he reminded her that
she must practise the Bach sonata for the evening's concert.

It did not, however, detain them long, for she found to her great
pleasure that she had not lost nearly as much of her playing as she
thought.

The evening lengthened out into long, clear hours and thoughts of the
green lanes; and to escape from hauntings of Owen--the music-room it
seemed still to hold echoes of his voice--she asked him to walk out with
her. They wandered in the cloudless evening. They sauntered past the
picture gallery, and the fact that she was walking with this strange and
somewhat ambiguous young man provoked her to think of herself and him as
a couple from that politely wanton assembly which had collected at
eventide to watch a pavane danced beneath the beauty of a Renaissance
colonnade, and to accentuate the resemblance Evelyn fluttered her
parasol and said, pointing across the yellow meadows--

"Look at those idle clouds, the afternoon is falling asleep."

She walked for some