“No, but I am enjoying its umbrageous rest,” I returned. “Reading my papers in the shadows.” “Shadow enough!” “That’s right. Mind you go on keeping up my spirits.” She did smile then, but she was obviously dissatisfied, both with me and Dr. Kennedy. I was taking no drugs, doing a little more each day, in the way of moving about. And yet I could not call myself convalescent. My legs were stiff and my back heavy. I had no feeling of returning vigour. What little I did I forced myself to do. I had hardly the energy to finish the letters. Had it not been for Dr. Kennedy I don’t believe, at this stage, I should have finished them! Although the next two or three set me thinking, and I was again visualising the writers. Not that Gabriel Stanton betrayed himself in his letters, as Margaret did in hers. I had to reconcile him with the donnish master of Greek roots, whom I had met and been ignored by, in Greyfriars’ Square. This was his answer to her last effusion. No. 13. 118 Greyfriars’ Square, 19th February, 1902. _Dear Mrs. Capel_:— I have read your letter ten—twenty times; my business day was filled and transformed by it. Now it is midnight and I am alone in the stillness of my room, the routine of the day and the evening over, and my brain, not always very quick, alight with the wonderment of your words, and my restless anxiety to respond. Don’t, I implore you, belittle the possibility of friendship! Surely the value of it is only proved by its needs? May I not say that in this crisis in your life friendship may be much to you. Can I hope that my privilege may be to fill the need? _You_ have been so splendidly frank and outspoken. _I_ have suffered all my life from a sort of stupid reticence, probably cowardly. But tonight, and to you, I want to throw off the habit of years and not miss, before it is too late, the luxury of being natural. Well, I am hot with hatred that you should have been hurt, and yet I am happy that you have told me of your wounds. Tonight I pray that it may be given to me to heal them. I am writing this because I must—though conventionally the shortness of our acquaintance does not justify me. But I have been conventional so long—circumstance has ruled and limited my doings. And tonight it comes to me that chance and fate are, or should be, greater than environment. The Gods only rarely offer gifts, and the blackness and blankness of despair follow their refusal. So I cling to the hope that they have now offered me a precious gift, and that in spite of all your pain—all the past which now so embitters you, to me may come the chance in some small way of proving to you that in friendship there is healing, and in sympathy and understanding, at least the hope of forgetfulness.