the outside of the little packet. This done, I went downstairs to the sitting- room, in which I expected to find Laura and Marian awaiting my return from the Opera. I felt my hand trembling for the first time when I laid it on the lock of the door.
No one was in the room but Marian. She was reading, and she looked at her watch, in surprise, when I came in.
"How early you are back!" she said. "You must have come away before the Opera was over."
"Yes," I replied, "neither Pesca nor I waited for the end. Where is Laura?"
"She had one of her bad headaches this evening, and I advised her to go to bed when we had done tea."
I left the room again on the pretext of wishing to see whether Laura was asleep. Marian's quick eyes were beginning to look inquiringly at my face—Marian's quick instinct was beginning to discover that I had something weighing on my mind.
When I entered the bedchamber, and softly approached the bedside by the dim flicker of the night-lamp, my wife was asleep.
We had not been married quite a month yet. If my heart was heavy, if my resolution for a moment faltered again, when I looked at her face turned faithfully to my pillow in her sleep—when I saw her hand resting open on the coverlid, as if it was waiting unconsciously for mine—surely there was some excuse for me? I only allowed myself a few minutes to kneel down at the bedside, and to look close at her—so close that her breath, as it came and went, fluttered on my face. I only touched her hand and her cheek with my lips at parting. She stirred in her sleep and murmured my name, but without waking. I lingered for an instant at the door to look at her again. "God bless and keep you, my darling!" I whispered, and left her.
Marian was at the stairhead waiting for me. She had a folded slip of paper in her hand.
"The landlord's son has brought this for you," she said. "He has got a cab at the door—he says you ordered him to keep it at your disposal."
"Quite right, Marian. I want the cab—I am going out again."
I descended the stairs as I spoke, and looked into the sitting- room to read the slip of paper by the light on the table. It contained these two sentences in Pesca's handwriting—
"Your letter is received. If I don't see you befo
