But it was not the blouses:  it was that exasperating thing “between the lines” that put an end to my work with its elusive teasing nuisance.  The first sharp impression is alone of value in such a case, for once analysis begins the imagination constructs all kinds of false interpretation.  The more I thought, the more I grew fuddled.  The letter, it seemed to me, wanted to say another thing; instead the eight sheets conveyed it merely.  It came to the edge of disclosure, then halted.

There was something on the writer’s mind, and I felt uneasy.  Studying the sentences brought, however, no revelation, but increased confusion only; for while the uneasiness remained, the first clear hint had vanished.  In the end I closed my books and went out to look up another matter at the British Museum library.  Perhaps I should discover it that way—­by turning the mind in a totally new direction.  I lunched at the Express Dairy in Oxford Street close by, and telephoned to Annie that I would be home to tea at five.

And at tea, tired physically and mentally after breathing the exhausted air of the Rotunda for five hours, my mind suddenly delivered up its original impression, vivid and clear-cut; no proof accompanied the revelation; it was mere presentiment, but convincing.  Frances was disturbed in her mind, her orderly, sensible, housekeeping mind; she was uneasy, even perhaps afraid; something in the house distressed her, and she had need of me.  Unless I went down, her time of rest and change, her quite necessary holiday, in fact, would be spoilt.  She was too unselfish to say this, but it ran everywhere between the lines.  I saw it clearly now.  Mrs. Franklyn, moreover—­and that meant Frances too—­would like a “man in the house.”  It was a disagreeable phrase, a suggestive way of hinting something she dared not state definitely.  The two women in that great, lonely barrack of a house were afraid.

My sense of duty, affection, unselfishness, whatever the composite emotion may be termed, was stirred; also my vanity.  I acted quickly, lest reflection should warp clear, decent judgment.

“Annie,” I said, when she answered the bell, “you need not send those blouses by the post.  I’ll take them down tomorrow when I go.  I shall be away a week or two, possibly longer.”  And, having looked up a train, I hastened out to telegraph before I could change my fickle mind.

But no desire came that night to change my mind.  I was doing the right, the necessary thing.  I was even in something of a hurry to get down to The Towers as soon as possible.  I chose an early afternoon train.

Chapter III