I should be sorry to deny it, I am sure, for not to this day do I know what I did say on the occasion to which she evidently referred.  But was it kind to break the silence of years with such a reference?  Was it even quite decent in Catherine to ignore my existence until I could be of use to her, and then to ask the favour in her first breath?  It was true, as she went on to remind me, that we were more or less connected after all, and at least conceivable that no one else could help her as I could, if I would.  In any case, it was a certain satisfaction to hear that Catherine herself was of the last opinion.  I read on.  She was in a difficulty; but she did not say what the difficulty was.  For one unworthy moment the thought of money entered my mind, to be ejected the next, as the Catherine of old came more and more into the mental focus.  Pride was the last thing in which I had found her wanting, and her letter indicated no change in that respect.

“You may wonder,” she wrote just at the end, “why I have never sent you a single word of inquiry, or sympathy, or congratulation!!  Well—­suppose it was ’bad blood’!! between us when you went away!  Mind, I never meant it to be so, but suppose it was:  could I treat the dear old you like that, and the Great New You like somebody else?  You have your own fame to thank for my unkindness! I am only thankful they haven’t given you the V.C.!! Then I should never have dared—­not even now!!!”

I smoked a cigarette when I had read it all twice over, and as I crushed the fire out of the stump I felt I could as soon think of lighting it again as I should have expected Catherine Evers to set a fresh match to me.  That, I was resolved, she should never do; nor was I quite coxcomb enough to suspect her of the desire for a moment.  But a man who has once made a fool of himself, especially about a woman somewhat older than himself, does not soon get over the soreness; and mine returned with the very fascination which made itself felt even in the shortest little letter.

Catherine wrote from the old address in Elm Park Gardens, and she wanted me to call as early as I could, or to make any appointment I liked.  I therefore telegraphed that I was coming at three o’clock that afternoon, and thus made for myself one of the longest mornings that I can remember spending in town.  I was staying at the time at the Kensington Palace Hotel, to be out of the central racket of things, and yet more or less under the eye of the surgeon who still hoped to extract the last bullet in time.  I can remember spending half the morning gazing aimlessly over the grand old trees, already prematurely bronzed, and the other half in limping in their shadow to the Round Pond, where a few little townridden boys were sailing their humble craft.  It was near the middle of August, and for the first time I was thankful that an earlier migration had not been feasible in my case.