Either course held hopeful possibilities. A prompt answer would surely suggest a concurrence of feeling. An answer delayed would without doubt mean that she was pondering his words and reading between the lines. So he possessed his soul in patience, of a somewhat attenuated texture, and waited in hope. But the whole day passed, and the night, and the next morning's post still brought him nothing,--nothing but an intimation from a publisher of excellent standing that he would not decline to look over the manuscript of his next book if he was open to an offer. And this important document he tossed on one side as lightly as if it were a begging letter or a tailor's advertisement. What were any other letters, or all the letters in the world, to him when the one letter he desired was not there? All that bright April day he waited indoors, in order to get Margaret's letter the moment it arrived. For how should he wander abroad, in gloomy-blazing streets or desolate-teeming parks with that anxiously-expected letter possibly awaiting him at home? The callous passage of the last post, after knocking cheerfully at every door but his own, left him wondering and desperate. Could he by any possibility have addressed his letter wrongly? It was not easy to make a mistake in No. 1 Melgrave Square. Could it have gone astray? The Post Office was abominably careless at times. One was constantly hearing of letters slipping down behind desks and monstrously delivered twenty years after date. What earthly good would that letter be delivered when he was forty-seven and Margaret Brandt somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty? Truly, it was monstrous, it was abominable that such carelessness should be permitted in the public departments! Could Margaret have taken umbrage at anything he had said? He conned his rough draft with solicitous care. It seemed new and strange and crude to him. He feared at each word to come upon the one that might have offended her. But no word, no phrase, nothing even of all that he had left unsaid sprang up before his horrified eyes to choke him with a sense of inadequacy, or inadvertency, or trespass. No sleep got he that night for cudgelling his tired brains for reasons why no answer had come from Margaret. Could she be ill? She was well enough, two days before, to call at Lady Elspeth's house. But, of course, even in a day one may take a chill and be prostrated. The possibility of that was brought home to him next morning by his landlady's surprised stare and exclamation at sight of his face. "Law, Mr. John!"--she had been handmaid to his mother for many years and he was still always Mr. John to her,--"Have you got the influenza too? Everyone seems to have it nowadays." He reassured her on the point. But every friend he met that day credited him with it, and suggested remedies and precautions sufficient to have made an end of any ordinary man.