."

"How long is it since that man gave me your telegram? I was
pacing up and down the departure platform, working myself
into an agony of nervousness and anxiety as the time went by,
wondering what on earth had happened to you, when the _chef
de gare_ came up: 'Monsieur attend une depeche?' There were
some stupid formalities--at last I got it. It seemed to me I
had already guessed what it contained.

"So it was _Delafield_ who met you--Delafield who turned you
back?

"I saw him outside the hotel yesterday, and we exchanged a
few words. I have always disliked his long, pale face and his
high and mighty ways--at any rate, towards plain fellows, who
don't belong to the classes, like me. Yesterday I was more
than usually anxious to get rid of him.

"So he guessed?

"It can't have been chance. In some way he guessed. And you
have been torn from me. My God! If I could only reach him--if
I could fling his contempt in his face! And yet--

"I have been walking up and down this room all night. The
longing for you has been the sharpest suffering I suppose
that I have ever known. For I am not one of the many people
who enjoy pain. I have kept as free of it as I could. This
time it caught and gripped me. Yet that isn't all. There has
been something else.

"What strange, patched creatures we are! Do you know, Julie,
that by the time the dawn came I was on my knees--thanking
God that we were parted--that you were on your way
home--safe--out of my reach? Was I mad, or what? I can't
explain it. I only know that one moment I hated Delafield as
a mortal enemy--whether he was conscious of what he had done
or no--and the next I found myself blessing him!

"I understand now what people mean when they talk of
conversion. It seems to me that in the hours I have just
passed through things have come to light in me that I myself
never suspected. I came of an Evangelical stock--I was
brought up in a religious household. I suppose that one
can't, after all, get away from the blood and the life that
one inherits. My poor, old father--I was a bad son, and I
know I hastened his death--was a sort of Puritan saint, with
very stern ideas. I seem to have been talking with him this
night, and shrinking under his condemnation. I could see his