When they had finished, it was dinner-time, and after dinner they had more music. Before going upstairs, Evelyn asked Agnes if there was any ink in her room. She had to ask her father for some writing paper, she would have avoided doing so if she could have helped it. She feared he would guess that she was writing to her lovers. She smiled—so odd did her scruples seem to her—she was writing to send them away. Her father's house was surely the right place. If it were to make appointments, that would be different. It was long past midnight when she read over her letter to Owen.
"Dear Owen,—A great deal has happened since we last met, and I am convinced that it would be unwise for me to see you in three months as I promised. My confessor is of the same opinion; he thinks three months too soon, and I must obey him. I have taken the step which I hope you will take some day, for you too are a Catholic. In going to confession and resolving not to see you again, I had a long struggle with my feelings; but God gave me grace to overcome them. You know me well enough by this time, and can have no doubt that I could not live with you again as your mistress, and as I do not feel that I could marry you, no course is open to me but to beg of you not to write to me, or to try to see me. Owen, I feel that all this is horrid, that I am horrid looked at from your side. I cannot seem anything else. I hate it all, but it has to be done. Perhaps one of these days you will see things as I do.
"I owe you—I do not know how much, but I owe you a great deal of money. I remember saying that Savelli's lessons were to be considered as a debt, also the expenses of the house in the Rue Balzac. You never would tell me what the rent of that house was, but as well as I can calculate, I owe you a thousand pounds for that year in Paris." (Evelyn paused. "It must be," she thought, "much more, but it would be difficult for me to pay more.")
"You have," she continued, "paid for a hundred other things besides Savelli's lessons and the house in the Rue Balzac, but it would be impossible to make out a correct account, I feel, too, that you gave me the greatest part of my jewellery thinking that one day I would be your wife; you would not have given me so much if you had not thought so. Therefore I feel it is only just to offer you the whole of it back. I will only ask you to allow me to keep a few trifles—the earrings you bought for me the day we arrived in Paris, the mummy's ring, etc., not more than half-a-dozen things in all. I should like to keep these in memory of a time which I ought to forget, but which I am afraid I shall never have the courage even to try to forget. Dear Owen, I cannot tell you why I cannot marry you, I only know that I cannot. I am obeying an instinct far stronger than I, and I cannot struggle against it any longer.
"One day perhaps we may meet—but it may not be for years, until we are both quite different.
"Sincerely yours,
"EVELYN INNES."
The moment she had written the address, she threw the pen aside, and she sat striving against an uncontrollable sense of misery. At last her pent-up tears ran over her eyelids. She flung herself on her bed, and lay weeping, shaken by short, choking sobs. All her courage of the morning had forsaken her; she could not face her new life, she could not send away Owen. Her inmost life rose in revolt. Why was this new sacrifice demanded of her? Why was her life to be made so hard, so impossible for her to endure? She felt she could not live in the life which she foresaw awaited her. Then she felt that she was being tried beyond the endurance of any woman. But the storm did not last, her sobs died away. She sat up, mopping her eyes with a soaking pocket handkerchief, and utterly exhausted by the violence of her emotions, she began to undress. She felt the impossibility of saying her prayers, her one longing was for sleep, oblivion; she wished herself dead, and was too worn out to put the thought from her, though she knew it was wrong.
In the morning the first thing she saw was the letter to Owen. There it was! And every word and letter sank into her brain. "Sir Owen Asher, Bart., Riversdale, Northamptonshire." She would have to post it, and never again would she see him. She questioned the right of the priest in obtaining from her a promise not to see him, so long as she did not sin. But Owen was an approximate cause of mortal sin....
Ashamed of her instability, and feeling herself unworthy and no longer pure as absolution had made her, she went that afternoon to St. Joseph's, and in confession laid the matter before Monsignor Mostyn. Regarding the money question, he approved of what she had written to Sir Owen, and he was far more indulgent regarding her breakdown than she had dared to hope. He had expected some such mental crisis. It was extraordinary the strength it gave her even to see his stern, grave face; she was thrilled by his certainty on all points, and it no longer seemed difficult to send the letter she had written, or to write a similar letter to Ulick, which he advised her to send by the same post. She began it the moment she got home, and she wrote in perfect confidence and courage, the words coming easily to her, so easily that there were times when she seemed to hear Monsignor speaking over her shoulder.