s
dreadfully ill while we were beating up against that gale, and the long
train journey has about finished him. At Victoria he looked more dead
than alive."

Evelyn went out to see this pale victim of sea sickness and expedition.
She offered him dinner and then tea, but he said he had had all he could
eat at the refreshment bars, and struggled upstairs with the portmanteau
of his too exigent master.

A few of her guests had already arrived, and Evelyn was talking to
Father Railston when Sir Owen came into the room.

"I shall not want you again to-night," he said, turning towards the door
to speak to his valet. "Don't sit up for me, and don't call me to-morrow
before ten."

She had not yet had time to speak to Owen of a dream which she had
dreamed a few nights before, and in which she was much interested. She
had seen him borne on the top of a huge wave, clinging to a piece of
wreckage, alone in the solitary circle of the sea. But Owen, when he
came downstairs dressed for the concert, looked no longer like a
seafarer. He wore an embroidered waistcoat, his necktie was tied in a
butterfly bow, and the three pearl studs, which she remembered, fastened
the perfectly-fitting shirt. She was a little disappointed, and thought
that she liked him better in the rough grey suit, with his hair tossed,
just come out of his travelling cap. Now it was brushed about his ears,
and it glistened as if from some application of brilliantine or other
toilet essence. Now he was more prosaic, but he had been extraordinarily
romantic when he ran in to see her, his grey travelling cap just
snatched from his head. It was then she should have told him her dream.
All this was a very faint impression, half humorous, half regretful, it
passed, almost without her being aware of it, in the background of her
mind. But she was keenly disappointed that he was not impressed by her
dream, and was inclined to consider it in the light of a mere
coincidence. In the first place, he hadn't been shipwrecked, and that
she should dream of shipwreck was most natural since she knew that he
had gone a-seafaring, and any gust of wind in the street was enough to
excite the idea of a castaway in the unclosed cellular tissues of her
brain. She did not answer, and he stood trying to force an answer from
her, but she could not, nor did she wish to think that her dream was no
more than a merely physiological phenomenon. But just at that moment Mr.
Innes was waiting to sp