So, for a time, it was. Into every moment of his daily life he worked this scene--Rachel was always with him, never, for a single instant, did he doubt that, in some fashion or another, she was coming to him. He had purchased an interest in some little business that had to do, for the most part, with candles, and down to the City now every morning he went. The candles prospered in a small but steady fashion and he found them of a more thrilling and romantic interest than he would once have believed possible. He had always known that he had a business head and now that his life was equable and regular he was astonished at the useful man that he was becoming. He liked the men with whom he worked, he found that some of his friends of the old days sought him out ... he was assured that he had only to wait for the death of his grandmother for his restoration to the Beaminster bosom. He was, during these first weeks, tranquil, almost happy, feeling that Mrs. Pont and the rest were, with every hour, passing more surely from his world, nourishing always, like hoarded treasure, his consciousness of Rachel.... Then a faint, a very faint restlessness crept upon him. The repetition of those precious moments was growing dry; from the very frequency of their recounting came impatience. His assurance that she would, ultimately, come to him grew chill. He needed now something more tangible, and gradually there grew with him the conviction that she would write. She had said, very clearly and distinctly, that she would not--but, if she cared as he knew that she did, then this silence must be as impossible for her as for himself. His state of mind now was that he expected a letter. When he came back from the City at half-past six or seven he expected to find lying there on the green tablecloth, the letter--In the morning his man appeared with a jug of hot water in one hand and the letters in the other--There, one of those tantalizing, mysterious envelopes, must be the letter. At first disappointment was reassured with "Oh! it will be there to-morrow." But as the days passed and the silence grew the torture developed. Now after that first search in the morning, after that swift sharp glance to the green tablecloth came physical pain--sickened heavy drooping of the spirits when the world looked one vast deserted plain of monotonous dullness, when the hours and hours and days and days that yet remained to life seemed intolerable in their dreary multitude. He would go to bed early in order that the morning letters might come the sooner; he fled home from the City, his heart beating like a drum, as he mounted his stairs. Only one line, one line, would have been sufficient. It needed only the reassurance that she thought of him, that she still cared ... _such_ a short letter would have given him all the comfort he needed.