I held it in my hand, turning it over. I felt sure of what was in it, but I didn’t know whether I was sorry or glad. Of course I should be glad from one point of view; but the points of view were so many. It would be all over now with the mission, for which my enthusiasm had so suddenly revived. When we had done this thing we should be discredited and ostracized by the people we knew best, and for some time to come. I stood fingering the thing, feeling as I had felt now and then when we had given up a trench or a vantage-point we had been holding against odds. Wise as it might be to yield, it was, nevertheless, a pity, and only left ground that would have to be regained. There was moral strength, too, in the mere fact of holding. Not to hold any longer was a sign of weakness, however good the reason. I broke the seal slowly, saying, as I did so, “Did she say where?” “No, Slim; she didn’t say nowhere.” “Only that I was not to keep her waiting.” He thought again. “Punctual was ’er word.” She needn’t, however, have said that. Of course I should be punctual. All might depend on my being on the spot at the moment when the clock struck. I still hesitated at drawing out the sheet. As a matter of fact I was wondering if she had received the sign she had talked about, and if so, what it was. After all, it was an unimportant note. DEAR FRANK,—Mother has allowed me to ask Doctor Feltring—a lady—who retreated with the Serbian Army into Albania, to speak at our house at half-past four to-morrow afternoon. Will you come? We shall all be glad to see you. Yours, REGINA. That was all. I should have felt a certain relief that nothing was irrevocably settled had there not been in the envelope another page. On it were written the words: “Are you trying the indirect method? If so, I think you will find it unwise.” If I read this once I must have read it twenty times, trying to fathom its meaning. I could only think that she was gently charging me with my apathy. The indirect method was the inactive method. I had let weeks go by not only without saying the word which she had told me she would obey, but without making any attempt to get speech with her. And yet it seemed to me that any other woman in the world might have resented this but Regina. It was a kind of resentment unlike her. She was too proud, too intense. Even in the hypnotic state induced by the knowledge, after years of doubt, that we cared for each other, she had kept her power of resistance. She would come with me if I made her, but she hoped I wouldn’t make her. That hope made it difficult for me to impose myself on any one at once so willing and so reluctant. Of what, from different angles, each of us owed to Cantyre—not to mention any one else—she was as sensitively aware as I was. I could hardly believe, therefore, that she was reproaching me; and yet what else did she mean?