A moment of the thought caused him a sigh, but he was in the
seventh heaven when she told him the first letter she had written
when she left the convent was for him. He had maligned her in
thinking the past had no meaning for her. For who was so faithful to
her friends? Again he forgot everything but himself sitting by her,
seeing her bright eyes, listening to her voice, absorbed by her
atmosphere; and talking and listening by turns he was carried away in
a delicious oblivion of everything except the sensation of the
moment. It seemed to him like floating down the current of some
enchanted river; but even in enchanted rivers there are eddies,
otherwise the enchantment of the current and the flowery banks under
which it flows would become monotonous, and presently Owen was caught
in an eddy. The stream flowed gaily while he told her of his
experience in the desert; she was interested in the gazelles and in
the eagles, though qualifying the sport as cruel, and in his
synthesis of the desert--a desire for a drink of clean water. Nor did
she resent his allusion to his meeting with Ulick at Dowlands,
interrupting him, however, to tell him that Ulick had married Louise.
"Married Louise!"
Louise! What an evocation of past times was in this name! And their
talk passed into a number of little sallies.
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