It was like a shadow, though a

shadow that dissolved upon inspection. Once or twice I glanced up,

expecting to find some one in the room, that the door had opened

unobserved and Annie was waiting for instructions. I heard the ‘buses

thundering across the bridge. I was aware of Oakley Street.

Montenegro and the blue Adriatic melted into the October haze along

that depressing Embankment that aped a river bank, and sentences from

the letter flashed before my eyes and stung me. Picking it up and

reading it through more carefully, I rang the bell and told Annie to

find the blouses and pack them for the post, showing her finally the

written description, and resenting the superior smile with which she

at once interrupted. ‘I know them, sir,’ and disappeared.

But it was not the blouses: it was that exasperating thing ‘between

the lines’ that put an end to my work with its elusive teasing

nuisance. The first sharp impression is alone of value in such a case,

for once analysis begins the imagination constructs all kinds of false

interpretation. The more I thought, the more I grew fuddled. The

letter, it seemed to me, wanted to say another thing; instead the

eight sheets conveyed it merely. It came to the edge of disclosure,

then halted.

There was something on the writer’s mind, and I felt uneasy.

Studying the sentences brought, however, no revelation, but increased

confusion only; for while the uneasiness remained, the first clear

hint had vanished. In the end I closed my books and went out to look up

another matter at the British Museum library. Perhaps I should

discover it that way—by turning the mind in a totally new direction.

I lunched at the Express Dairy in Oxford Street close by, and

telephoned to Annie that I would be home to tea at five.

And at tea, tired physically and mentally after breathing the

exhausted air of the Rotunda for five hours, my mind suddenly

delivered up its original impression, vivid and clear-cut; no proof

accompanied the revelation; it was mere presentiment, but convincing.

Frances was disturbed in her mind, her orderly, sensible, housekeeping

mind; she was uneasy, even perhaps afraid; something in the house

distressed her, and she had need of me. Unless I went down, her time of

rest and change, her quite necessary holiday, in fact, would be

spoilt. She was too unselfish to say this, but it ran everywhere

between the lines. I saw it clearly now. Mrs. Franklyn, moreover—and

that meant Frances too—would like a ‘man in the house.’ It was a

disagreeable phrase, a suggestive way of hinting something she dared

not state definitely. The two women in that great, lonely barrack of a

house were afraid.

My sense of duty, affection, unselfishness, whatever the composite

emotion may be termed,.was stirred; also my vanity. I acted quickly,

lest reflection should warp clear, decent judgment.

‘Annie,’ I said, when she answered the bell, ‘you need not send

those blouses by the post. I’ll take them down tomorrow when I go. I

shall be away a week or two, possibly longer.’ And, having looked up a

train, I hastened out to telegraph before I could change my fickle

mind.