As feverishly and feather-headedly as a boy he skimmed upon the air to post this letter, and as he slipped it into the box he kissed the envelope, and as he did so he was overcome by a sense of the delicious absurdity of his love, of all love, and he bowed low and gravely to the Opera House and said: "You are a pimple on the face of the earth, my friend, but my love is the blood of its veins." He packed his bag before he went to bed, was up very early in the morning, and, as soon as a certain shop in the Rue de la Paix was opened, went in and bought a necklace of crystals and emeralds. He was in London by six o'clock and half an hour later in the northern express. He reached Blackpool before his letter. The company and Matilda were gone. It was Sunday. The theater was closed and he had lost his card of the tour. Watts did not know. He never knew anything. Companies came and went and he stayed, as he said with his weak, watery smile, "right there," only thankful that their damnable tunes were gone with them. Old Mole cursed him for an idiot and hunted up the stage doorkeeper, whose son was callboy and knew everything. He routed them out of bed, got the information he needed, and was off again as fast as a cross-country train could carry him. He broke in on Matilda as she was at breakfast, rushed at her boisterously. Through the long hours in the crawling train, with the dawn creeping gray, opal, ripe strawberry, over moors and craggy hills, he had contrived the scene, played a game of Consequences with himself, what he said to her and what she said to him, but Matilda peered at him and in a dull, husky voice said: "Oh! It's you." And fatuously he stood there and said: "Yes." She was pale and weary and there were deep marks under her eyes. She said: "You didn't leave me any money. It was important. We got here last night and then they told us there'd be no last week's salary. They didn't pay us on Friday. We traveled on Sunday as usual, and when we got here they told us. Some one in London's done something. Enid"--that was the name of the knitting woman--"Enid looked awful when they told us, quite ill. I went home with her, and I've been up with her all night. She didn't sleep a wink, but went on counting and counting out loud, like she used to do to herself in the train. . . . I've been up with her all night, but it wasn't any good, because in the morning, when the dawn came, she got up and walked about and went into the next room, and when I went after her she was dead. And if I'd only had a little money. . . . She was a good woman and the only friend I had, and she killed herself." He sat by her side and took her hand and soothed her. "But, my dear child, you had plenty of money of your own in the bank, and your own checkbook." "I didn't know I was to spend that. It was in the bank. You never told me what to do with the book."