“But what?”

“Well, it’s hard to express it.  Nothing happened to prevent you?”

“Prevent me?”

“I don’t mean that you were actually prevented, but was there another reason?”

“You mean a sudden scruple of conscience?  My conscience is quite healthy.”

“Then what stayed you was no more than a fear of displeasing me?  And you wanted to come to see me, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did.  Well, perhaps there was another reason... only... no, there was no other reason.”

“But there was; you have admitted that there was.  Do tell me.”

And Owen told her that something seemed to have held him back when the thought came of going to her room.  “It was really very strange.  The thought was put into my mind suddenly that it would be better for me not to go to your room.”

“No more than a sudden thought?  But the thought was very clear and distinct?”

“Yes; but between waking and sleeping thoughts are unusually distinct.”

“You don’t believe in miracles, Owen?” And she told him of her dream and her sudden awaking, and the voices heard in her ears at first, then in the room, and then about the house.  “So you see the nuns kept us apart.”

“And you believe in these things?”

“How can I do otherwise?”

Owen sighed, and they walked on a few paces.  The last leaves were dancing; the woods were cold and wet, the heavy branches of the fir-trees dripping with cold rain, and in the walks a litter of chestnut-leaves.

“Not a space of blue in the sky, only grey.  It will be drearier still in Glasgow; you had better stay here,” he said, as they walked round the little lake, watching the water-fowl moving in and out of the reeds, and they talked for some time of Riversdale, of the lake there, and the ducks which rose in great numbers and flew round and round the park, dropping one by one into the water.  “You will never see Riversdale again, perhaps?”

“Perhaps not,” she answered; and hearing her say it, his future life seemed to him as forlorn as the landscape.

“What will you do?  What will become of you?  What strange transformation has taken place in you?”

“If—­But what is the use of going over it again?”

“If what?”

“What would you have me do?  Marriage would only ruin you, Owen, make you very unhappy.  Why do you want me to enter on a life which I feel isn’t mine, and which could only end in disaster for both of us.”  He asked her why it would end in disaster, and she answered, “It is impossible to lay bare one’s whole heart.  When one changes one’s ideas one changes one’s friends.”

“Because one’s friends are only the embodiment of one’s ideas.  But I cannot admit that you would be unhappy as my wife.”

“Everybody is unhappy when they are not doing what Nature intended them to do.”

“And what did Nature intend you to do?  Only to sing operas?”