ienate them;
they seemed to have drifted apart. She saw a silently widening distance,
as if two ships were moving away. One day he asked her if she were going
to communion next Sunday. She answered that she did not think so, and
sat thinking a long while, for she had become suddenly aware that she
was not as pious as she used to be. She did not think that Owen's
arguments had touched her faith, but she no longer felt the same
interest in religion; and in thinking over this change, which seemed so
independent of her own will, she grew pensive and perplexed. Her
melancholy was a sort of voluptuous meditation. She was conscious all
the while of Owen's presence. It was as if he were standing by her, and
she felt that he must be thinking of her.

He had often spoken of going away with her; she had smiled plaintively,
never regarding an elopement as possible. But one evening her father had
gone to dine with a certain Roman prelate who believed in the advantage
to the Catholic Church of a musical reformation. And she had gone to
meet Owen, who had driven from London. They had walked two hours in the
lanes, and when she got home she ran to her room and undressed
hurriedly, thinking how delightful it would be to lie awake in the dark
and remember it all. And feeling the cool sheets about her she folded
her arms and abandoned herself to every recollection. Her imagination,
heightened as by a drug, enabled her to see the white, dusty road and
the sickly, yellow moon rising through the branches. Again she was
standing by him, her arms were on his neck; again they stood looking
into the vague distance, seeing the broken paling in the moonlight.
There were his eyes and hands and lips to think about, and when she had
exhausted these memories, others sprang upon her. It was in the very
centre of her being that she was thinking of the moment when she had
spied his horse's head over the hill top. She had recognised his
silhouette against the sky. He had whipped up the horse, he had thrown
the reins to the groom, he had sprung from the step. The evening was
then lighted by the sunset, and as the sky darkened, their love had
seemed to grow brighter. In comparison with this last meeting, all past
meetings seemed shadowy and unreal. She had never loved him before, and
if her smile had dwindled when he asked her to come away with him, she
had liked to hear him say the dogcart was waiting at the inn. But when
they stood by the stile where catt