The month was August.  The streets were empty.  The vilest breeze that blows—­a hot east wind in London—­was the breeze abroad on that day.  Even Geoffrey appeared to feel the influence of the weather as the cab carried him from his father’s door to the hotel.  He took off his hat, and unbuttoned his waistcoat, and lit his everlasting pipe, and growled and grumbled between his teeth in the intervals of smoking.  Was it only the hot wind that wrung from him these demonstrations of discomfort?  Or was there some secret anxiety in his mind which assisted the depressing influences of the day?  There was a secret anxiety in his mind.  And the name of it was—­Anne.

As things actually were at that moment, what course was he to take with the unhappy woman who was waiting to hear from him at the Scotch inn?

To write? or not to write?  That was the question with Geoffrey.

The preliminary difficulty, relating to addressing a letter to Anne at the inn, had been already provided for.  She had decided—­if it proved necessary to give her name, before Geoffrey joined her—­to call herself Mrs., instead of Miss, Silvester.  A letter addressed to “Mrs. Silvester” might be trusted to find its way to her without causing any embarrassment.  The doubt was not here.  The doubt lay, as usual, between two alternatives.  Which course would it be wisest to take?—­to inform Anne, by that day’s post, that an interval of forty-eight hours must elapse before his father’s recovery could be considered certain?  Or to wait till the interval was over, and be guided by the result?  Considering the alternatives in the cab, he decided that the wise course was to temporize with Anne, by reporting matters as they then stood.

Arrived at the hotel, he sat down to write the letter—­doubted—­and tore it up—­doubted again—­and began again—­doubted once more—­and tore up the second letter—­rose to his feet—­and owned to himself (in unprintable language) that he couldn’t for the life of him decide which was safest—­to write or to wait.

In this difficulty, his healthy physical instincts sent him to healthy physical remedies for relief.  “My mind’s in a muddle,” said Geoffrey.  “I’ll try a bath.”

It was an elaborate bath, proceeding through many rooms, and combining many postures and applications.  He steamed.  He plunged.  He simmered.  He stood under a pipe, and received a cataract of cold water on his head.  He was laid on his back; he was laid on his stomach; he was respectfully pounded and kneaded, from head to foot, by the knuckles of accomplished practitioners.  He came out of it all, sleek, clear rosy, beautiful.  He returned to the hotel, and took up the writing materials—­and behold the intolerable indecision seized him again, declining to be washed out!  This time he laid it all to Anne.  “That infernal woman will be the ruin of me,” said Geoffrey, taking up his hat.  “I must try the dumb-bells.”

The pursuit of the new remedy for stimulating a sluggish brain took him to a public house, kept by the professional pedestrian who had the honor of training him when he contended at Athletic Sports.