The callous passage of the last post, after knocking cheerfully at every door but his own, left him wondering and desperate.

Could he by any possibility have addressed his letter wrongly?  It was not easy to make a mistake in No. 1 Melgrave Square.

Could it have gone astray?  The Post Office was abominably careless at times.  One was constantly hearing of letters slipping down behind desks and monstrously delivered twenty years after date.  What earthly good would that letter be delivered when he was forty-seven and Margaret Brandt somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty?  Truly, it was monstrous, it was abominable that such carelessness should be permitted in the public departments!

Could Margaret have taken umbrage at anything he had said?  He conned his rough draft with solicitous care.  It seemed new and strange and crude to him.  He feared at each word to come upon the one that might have offended her.  But no word, no phrase, nothing even of all that he had left unsaid sprang up before his horrified eyes to choke him with a sense of inadequacy, or inadvertency, or trespass.

No sleep got he that night for cudgelling his tired brains for reasons why no answer had come from Margaret.

Could she be ill?  She was well enough, two days before, to call at Lady Elspeth’s house.  But, of course, even in a day one may take a chill and be prostrated.

The possibility of that was brought home to him next morning by his landlady’s surprised stare and exclamation at sight of his face.

“Law, Mr. John!”—­she had been handmaid to his mother for many years and he was still always Mr. John to her,—­“Have you got the influenza too?  Everyone seems to have it nowadays.”

He reassured her on the point.  But every friend he met that day credited him with it, and suggested remedies and precautions sufficient to have made an end of any ordinary man.

He was vexed to think his face so clear an index of his feelings, but, truly, his spirits were none of the best and the weather was enervatingly warm.

It was quite inconceivable to him that Margaret Brandt should, of knowledge and intention, drop their pleasant acquaintance in this fashion.  He believed he knew her well enough to know that, even if she had any fault to find with his letter, she would still have replied to it, and would have delicately conveyed her feeling in her answer.

Then, either she had never received it, or, for some good reason or other, she was unable to reply.

He went down to Melgrave Square to make sure that No. 1 was still there.  Possibly he might come across Margaret in the neighbourhood.  If he did he would know at a glance if she had received his letter.

But No. 1 offered him no explanations.  It stood as usual, large and prim and precise, the very acme of solid, sober wealth and assertive moral rectitude.  He was strongly tempted to call and ask for Miss Brandt, but it was only ten o’clock in the morning, and the house looked so truly an embodiment in stucco of Mrs. Grundy and Jeremiah Pixley, that he forbore and went on his melancholy way.