Then came torture of expectancy.  The whole man aching, sore, with impatience; reason utterly fled, intellect bemused and baffled; a healthy, competent citizen of nigh middle age set all at once in the corner, crowned with a fool’s cap, twiddling his thumbs in nervous fury.  Dolorous spectacle, and laughable withal.

He waited four-and-twenty hours, then clutched at Alma’s reply.  ’Dear Mr Rolfe, —­ Will you come again next Wednesday?’ That was all.  Did it amuse her to keep him in suspense?  The invitation might imply a fulfilment of his hopes, but Alma’s capriciousness allowed no certainty; a week’s reflection was as likely to have one result as another.  For him it meant a week of solitude and vacancy.

Or would have meant it, but for that sub-vigorous element in his character, that saving strain of practical rationality, which had brought him thus far in life without sheer overthrow.  An hour after receiving Alma’s enigmatical note, he was oppressed by inertia; another hour roused him to self-preservation, and supplied him with a project.  That night he took the steamer from Harwich to Antwerp, and for the next four days wandered through the Netherlands, reviving his memories of a journey, under very different circumstances, fifteen years ago.  The weather was bright and warm; on the whole he enjoyed himself; he reached London again early on Wednesday morning, and in the afternoon, with a touch of weather on his cheek, presented himself at Alma’s door.

She awaited him in the drawing-room, alone.  This time, he felt sure, no interruption was to be feared; he entered with confident step and a cheery salutation.  A glance showed him that his common-sense had served him well; it was Alma who looked pale and thought-worn, who betrayed timidity, and could not at once command herself.

‘What have you been doing?’ she asked, remarking his appearance.

‘Rambling about a little,’ he replied good-humouredly.

‘Where?  You look as if you had been a voyage.’

‘So I have, a short one.’

And he told her how his week had passed.

‘So that’s how you would like to spend your life —­ always travelling?’

’Oh no!  I did it to kill time.  You must remember that a week is something like a year to a man who is waiting impatiently.’

She dropped her eyes.

’I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.  But I never thought you very impatient.  You always seemed to take things philosophically.’

‘I generally try to.’

There was a pause.  Alma, leaning forward in her chair, kept her eyes down, and did not raise them when she again spoke.

’You have surprised and perplexed and worried me.  I thought in a week’s time I should know what to say, but —­ Doesn’t it strike you, Mr. Rolfe, that we’re in a strange position towards each other?  You know very little of me —­ very little indeed, I’m sure.  And of you, when I come to think of it, all I really know is that you hardly care at all for what has always been my one great interest.’