"It is now 10 P.M. and he hasn’t come back yet. Another telephone message told me he wouldn’t be home to dinner, so I dined alone, with only Mosie Gobs for company, but he waits on me like my shadow, and gives me good advice on all occasions. "It seems his heart is still on fire with love for me, and having caught him examining his face in my toilet-glass this morning I was amused, and a little touched, when he asked me to-night if the Army Surgeon had any medicine to make people white. "Apparently his former love was a small black maiden who works in the laundry, and he shares your view (as revealed in happier hours, your Highness) that there’s nothing in the world so nice as a little girl except a big one. But I find he hasn’t the best opinion of you, for when I was trying to while away an hour after dinner by playing the piano I overheard the monkey telling the cook that to see her hands (_i.e._ mine) run over the teeth of the music-box amazes the mind—therefore why should her husband (_id est_, you) spend so much time in the coffee-shop? "Since then I’ve been out in the arbour trying to live over again the delicious quarter of an hour you speak of, but though the wing of night is over the city and the air is as soft as somebody’s kiss is (except sometimes) it was a dreadful failure, for when I closed my eyes, thinking hearts see each other, I could feel nothing but the sting of a mosquito, and could only hear the watchman crying _Wahhed!_ and what that was like you’ve only to open your mouth wide and then say it and you’ll know. "So here I am at my desk talking against time until Father comes and there’s something to say. And if you would know how I am myself, I would tell you, most glorious and respected, that I’m as tranquil as can be expected considering what a fever you’ve put me in, for, falling on my knees before your unsullied hands, O Serenity, it seems to me you’re a dunce after all, and have gone and done exactly what your great namesake did before you, in spite of his tragic fate to warn you. "The trouble in Gordon Major’s case was that the Government gave him a discretionary power and he used it, and it seems as if something similar has happened to Gordon Minor, with the same results. I hope to goodness they may send you a definite order as the consequence of their colloguing to-night, and then you can have no choice and there will be no further trouble.