The afternoon dragged. To tell the truth, I wanted to see his letter immensely. Yet how could I? To have read it out of mere curiosity would have been like peeping through a hedge at an unsuspecting pair of sweethearts, or like eavesdropping behind some Lover’s Seat. Still, it was terribly tantalizing to have the door of the play-house slammed in my face just as the piece was getting exciting. I tried to read, work, walk about, write; but in vain. All I could do was to think, remember, anticipate, dream, till I felt like the loneliest of lonely outcasts. Ruddington’s love-affair, which had been so silly and worrying and tiresome, suddenly became as warm and homely, and bright and cosy as a Christmas hearth; and I felt like a friendless orphan wandering outside in the gloom and the cold. By six o’clock, I was so deep in the dumps that I positively made some sort of a weather-remark to the enormous, silent Frenchman who has been here a week. I hadn’t guessed that he was a mountain of shyness. At my voice he jumped, flushed crimson, knocked over his wine, choked, and nearly frightened me out of my wits before he could utter an intelligible word. Georgette was sulky about the spilt claret; and, from merely feeling solitary, I went on to the knowledge that I was roundly hated. When I came up to my room, an hour ago, I found Susan had left Ruddington’s letter under my blotting-pad. Envelope and contents were so flat and uncrumpled that I hardly think they have been cherished next to Susan’s wildly-beating heart. Ruddington says: SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. For ever, everywhere, you are Suzanne, all mine. In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Véronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve’s garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise. Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone. But let not Suzanne mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Suzanne will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly (for where is there a prouder than Suzanne?) and not because I am handsome, or desirable or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Suzanne must be all mine because I am all hers; because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire.