letter-box on the way to morning service. He peered eagerly. There
had been no answer to his letter; it was a month; he was surprisingly
uneasy. But there was nothing in the mail-box, so he swept along to
the vestry-room, and got into his cassock and read service to the
handful of people in the chapel, with a sense of sick depression which
he manfully choked down at every upheaval, but which was distinctly
there quite the same. Service over, there were things to be done for
three hours; also there was to be a meeting in his rooms at twelve
o'clock to consider the establishment of a new mission, his special
interest, in the rough country at the west of the city; the rector and
the bishop and two others were coming. He hurried home and up to his
place, at eleven-forty-five, and gave a hasty look about to see if
things were fairly proper for august people. Not that the bishop would
notice. He dusted off the library table with his handkerchief, put one
book discreetly on the back side of the table instead of in front,
swept an untidy box of cigarettes into a drawer, and gathered up the
fresh pile of wash from a chair and put it on the bed in his
sleeping-room and shut the door hard. Then he gazed about with the air
of a satisfied housekeeper. He lifted up a loudly ticking clock which
would not go except lying on its face, and regarded it. Five minutes
to twelve, and they were sure to be late. He extracted a cigarette
from the drawer and lighted it; his thoughts, loosened from immediate
pressure, came back slowly, surely, to the empty mailbox, his last
letter, the girl whom he knew grotesquely as "August First." Why had
she not written for four weeks? He had considered that question from
many angles for about three weeks, and the question rose and confronted
him, always new, at each leisure moment. It was disproportionate, it
showed lack of balance, that it should loom so large on the horizon,
with the hundred other interests, tragedies, which were there for him;
but it loomed.