Tired though he must have been, the doctor had never felt less like sleep.  There was a fever in his blood which the cool quietness of the spare room could not soothe.  The lavendered freshness of the bed invited in vain.  Crossing to the western window, he threw up the blind and looked out to where, peeping out between roofs and trees, the gable window of the Elms glittered in the early sun.  The morning breeze blew softly on his face, sweet with the scent of flowering pinks and mignonette.  In the orchard all the birds were up and singing.  Every blade of grass was gemmed with dew, sparkling through the yellow glory of dawn like diamonds through a primrose veil.  But Callandar, usually so alive to every manifestation of beauty, saw nothing save the distant glitter of the gable window.  The morning, in which he could hardly hope to see Esther, stretched before him intolerably long.

Upon impulse he drew his desk to the window and, sitting down, began to write: 

“Dear Old Button-Moulder—­

“Behold the faulty button about to be recast!  This is to be a big day.  I am writing you now because if she refuses me, I shan’t be able to tell you of it, and if she accepts me I shan’t have time.  I fancy you know who she is, old man.  I saw enlightenment grow in your eyes that day after church.  I hardly knew it myself, then, but now I am sure.  Do you remember that house we looked at one day?  I have forgotten even the street, but we can find it again.  It had a long sloping lawn, you remember, and stone steps and a beautiful panelled hall running straight through to a walled garden which might well have fallen there by some Arabian Nights enchantment.  That is the house I mean to have for Esther.  I can see her there quite plainly, in her blue dress, filling the rose bowl which stands upon the round table in a dusky corner of the hall.  Over her shoulder, through the open door, glows the riotous colour of the garden.  Her pure profile gleams like mother-o’-pearl against the dark panelling—­say, Willits, just go and look up that house, will you?  I am going to ask her to marry me.  And I never knew before what a coward I am.  Was there ever a chap named Callandar who quoted uppish remarks about being Captain of his Soul?  If so, let me apologise for him.  I think the chap who wrote those verses could never have been in love—­or perhaps he wrote them after she said ‘yes.’  I’ll telegraph the news.  Don’t expect me to write.  And don’t dare to come down to see me.  H.C.

“P.S.—­I came upon a good thing the other day.  It is by Galsworthy, the chap who writes English problem novels: 

     “’If on a spring night I went by
          And God were standing there,
     What is the prayer that I would cry
          To Him?  This is the prayer: 
     O Lord of courage grave,
          O Master of this night of spring,
     Make firm in me a heart too brave
          To ask Thee anything!’”