And perhaps because we had been at school together, perhaps because I had no longer a grudge against him, perhaps because I was not quite so repellent to confidences as heretofore, and he was conscious of some undefinable change in me, Sinclair said his say. "I fell in and out of love fairly often when I was young," he said. "You've seen me do it. But at the back of my mind there was always a deep-rooted conviction that I was only playing at it, and the real thing was to come, that there was the one woman waiting somewhere for me. I wasn't in any hurry for her. I supposed she would turn up at the right moment. But the years passed. I reached thirty. As I got older I began to have sudden horrible fits of depression that she wasn't coming after all. They did not last, but they became more severe as I gradually realised that I could not really live without her, that I was only marking time till she came. "And one summer night, or rather morning, ten years ago, something happened. You need not believe it unless you like, Chipps. It's all one to me whether you do or you don't. I came home from a ball, and I found among my letters one dictated by my young sister saying she was very ill and wishing to see me. She was always ill, poor little thing, and always wanting to see me. She was consumptive, and she lived in the summer months with her nurse in a shooting-box high up on the Yorkshire moors, the most inaccessible place, but she liked it, and the doctor approved of it. I used to go and see her there when I had time. But that was not often. I had made provision for her comfort, but I seldom saw her. "I laid the letter down, and wondered whether I ought to go. I did not want to leave London at that moment. I had been dancing all night with Mildred, and was very much _épris_ with her. Then I saw there was a postscript in the same handwriting, no doubt that of the nurse. "Miss Sinclair is more ill than she is aware." "That settled it. I must go. Once before I had been warned her condition was serious, and had hurried up to Yorkshire to find her almost as usual. But, nevertheless, I supposed I ought to go. I felt irritated with the poor little thing. But as my other sister Anna was married and out in India, I was the only relation she had left in England. I decided to go. "In that case it was not worth while to go to bed. I sat down by the open window, and watched the dawn come up behind Westminster. And as I sat with the letter in my hand a disgust of my life took hold of me. It looked suddenly empty and vain and self-seeking, and cumbered with worldly squalid interests and joyless amusements. And where was the one woman of whom I had had obscure hints from time to time? Other women came and went. But she who was essential to me, who became more essential to my well-being with every year--she never came. I felt an intense need of her, a passionate desire to find her, to seek her out. But where?