d overtaken them. She sat and pondered,
and in her vision ships hailed each other as they crossed in mid-ocean.
Ships drew together as they entered a harbour. Ships separated as they
fared forth, their prows set towards different horizons. She sat
absorbed in the mystery of destiny. Like two ships, they had rested side
by side in a casual harbour. They had loved each other as well as their
different destinies had allowed them. None can do more. She loved him
better--in a way--but he was less to her than Owen. She felt that, and
he had felt that.... As he said, if they were to meet again they would
not recognise each other, so different were the suns that would shine
upon them and the oceans they would travel through. She understood what
he meant, and a prevision of her future life seemed to nicker up in her
brain, like the sea seen through a mist; and through vistas in the haze
she saw the lonely ocean, and her bark was already putting off from the
shore. All she had known she was leaving behind. The destiny of ships is
the ocean.

Owen's letter she received in the evening about six o'clock. She changed
colour at the sight of it, and her hand trembled, and she tore the
envelope across as she opened it.

"You ask me to make no attempt to save you. You ask me to stand on the
bank while you struggle and are dragged down by the current. Evelyn, I
have never disobeyed your slightest wish before, but I declare my right
to use all means to save you from a terrible fate. I return to London to
do so. God only knows if I shall succeed.... In any case I hope you will
never allude again to any money questions. What I gave, I gave, and
unless you want to kill me outright, never speak again of returning my
presents.--As ever,

OWEN ASHER."

Her eyes ran through the lines, and her heart said, "How he loves me."
But the temptation to see him quenched instantly in remembrance of her
Communion, and she tore the letter hastily into two pieces, as if by
destroying it she destroyed the difficulty it had created for her. She
must not see him. But how was she to avoid meeting him? To-morrow be
would be waiting in the street for her, and she walked about the room
too agitated to think clearly. He seemed like the devil trying to come
between her and God. She must not see him, of that she was quite sure.
She would lock herself in her room. But then she would miss Holy
Communion, and her heart was set on the Sacrament; the Sacrament alone
co