“When I heard your name it called up an image in my mind, and that image has never wholly left me—­it comes back often like a ghost.”

“When you were thinking of something different?”

“I am your destiny, or one of your destinies.”

Her eyes were fixed eagerly upon him; his darkness and the mysteries he represented attracted her, and she even felt she could follow.  At the same moment his eyes seemed the most beautiful in the world, and she desired him to make love to her.  While enticing, she resisted him, now more feebly, and when he let go her hands she sat looking at him, wondering how she was to get through the evening without kissing him....  She spoke to him about his opera.  He asked her if she were going to sing it, and she looked at him with vague, uncertain eyes.  He said he knew she never would.  She asked him why he thought so, and again a great longing bent him towards her.  She withdrew her hands and face from his lips, and they had begun to talk of other things when he perceived her face close to his.  Unable to resist he kissed her cheek, fearing that she would order him from the room.  But at the instant of the touching of his lips, she threw her arm about his neck, and drew him down as a mermaiden draws her mortal lover into the depths, and in a wondering world of miraculous happiness he surrendered himself.

“Dearest, dearest,” he said, raising himself to look at her.

“Ulick, Ulick,” she said, “let me kiss you, I’ve longed such a while.”

He thought he had never seen so radiant a face.  What disguise had fallen?  And looking at her, he strove to discover the woman who had denied him so often.  This new woman seemed made all of light and love and transport, the woman of all his divinations, the being the old photograph in the old music-room had warned him of, the being that the voice of his destiny had told him he was to meet.  And as they stood by the fireplace looking into each other’s eyes, he gradually became aware of his happiness.  It broke in his heart with a thrill and shiver like an exquisite dawn, opal and rose; the brilliancy of her eyes, the rapture of her face, the magnetic stirring of the little gold curls along her forehead were so wonderful that he feared her as an enchanter fears the spirit he has raised.  Like one who has suddenly chanced on the hilltop, he gazed on the prospect, believing it all to be his.  They stood gazing into each other’s eyes too eager to speak, and when she called his name he remembered the legended forest, and replied with the song of the bird that leads Siegfried to Brunnhilde.  She laughed, and sang the next two bars, and then seemed to forget everything.

“Dearest, of what are you thinking?”

“Only if I ever shall kiss you again, Ulick.”

“You will always kiss me!”

She did not answer, and, frightened by her irresponsive eyes, he said—­

“But, Evelyn, you must love me, me—­only me; you will never see him again?”