It was terrible that after three years the mere sight of her handwriting should have power to throw him into this state of eager, passionate anguish. He was seized with the old panic, the terrified perception of his surrender, of his utter weakness, which made flight the only possible resistance. That was why he had destroyed the letter unread. When Mrs. Wallace was many thousand miles away there had been no danger in confessing that he loved her; but now it was different. What did she say in the letter? Had she in some feminine, mysterious fashion discovered his secret? Did she ask him to go and see her? James remembered one of their conversations. "Oh, I love going to London!" she had cried, opening her arms with the charming, exotic gesticulation which distinguished her from all other women. "I enjoy myself awfully." "What do you do?" "Everything. And I write to poor Dick three times a week, and tell him all I haven't done." "I can't bear the grass-widow," said James. "Poor boy, you can't bear anything that's amusing! I never knew anyone with such an ideal of woman as you have--a gloomy mixture of frumpishness and angularity." James did not answer. "Don't you wish we were in London now?" she went on. "You and I together? I really believe I should have to take you about. You're as innocent as a babe." "D'you think so?" said James, rather hurt. "Now, if we were in town, on our own, what would you do?" "Oh, I don't know. I suppose make a little party and dine somewhere, and go to the Savoy to see the 'Mikado.'" Mrs. Wallace laughed. "I know. A party of four--yourself and me, and two maiden aunts. And we should be very prim, and talk about the weather, and go in a growler for propriety's sake. I know that sort of evening. And after the maiden aunts had seen me safety home, I should simply howl from boredom. My dear boy, I'm respectable enough here. When I'm on my own, I want to go on the loose. Now, I'll tell you what I want to do if ever we are in town together. Will you promise to do it?" "If I possibly can." "All right! Well, you shall fetch me in the fastest hansom you can find, and remember to tell the driver to go as quick as ever he dare. We'll dine alone, please, at the most expensive restaurant in London! You'll engage a table in the middle of the room, and you must see that the people all round us are very smart and very shady. It always makes me feel so virtuous to look at disreputable women! Do I shock you?" "Not more than usual." "How absurd you are! Then we'll go to the Empire. And after that we'll go somewhere else, and have supper where the people are still smarter and still shadier; and then we'll go to Covent Garden Ball. Oh, you don't know how I long to go on the rampage sometimes! I get so tired of propriety." "And what will P. W. say to all this?" "Oh, I'll write and tell him that I spent the evening with some of his poor relations, and give eight pages of corroborative evidence."