Once or twice Lewisham misquoted the testimonial—­to no purpose.  And May was halfway through, and South Kensington was silent.  The future was grey.

And in the depths of his doubt and disappointment came her letter.  It was typewritten on thin paper.  “Dear,” she wrote simply, and it seemed to him the most sweet and wonderful of all possible modes of address, though as a matter of fact it was because she had forgotten his Christian name and afterwards forgotten the blank she had left for it.

“Dear, I could not write before because I have no room at home now where I can write a letter, and Mrs. Frobisher told my mother falsehoods about you.  My mother has surprised me dreadfully—­I did not think it of her.  She told me nothing.  But of that I must tell you in another letter.  I am too angry to write about it now.  Even now you cannot write back, for you must not send letters here.  It would never do.  But I think of you, dear,”—­the “dear” had been erased and rewritten—­“and I must write and tell you so, and of that nice walk we had, if I never write again.  I am very busy now.  My work is rather difficult and I am afraid I am a little stupid.  It is hard to be interested in anything just because that is how you have to live, is it not?  I daresay you sometimes feel the same of school.  But I suppose everybody is doing things they don’t like.  I don’t know when I shall come to Whortley again, if ever, but very likely you will be coming to London.  Mrs. Frobisher said the most horrid things.  It would be nice If you could come to London, because then perhaps you might see me.  There is a big boys’ school at Chelsea, and when I go by it every morning I wish you were there.  Then you would come out in your cap and gown as I went by.  Suppose some day I was to see you there suddenly!!”

So it ran, with singularly little information in it, and ended quite abruptly, “Good-bye, dear.  Good-bye, dear,” scribbled in pencil.  And then, “Think of me sometimes.”

Reading it, and especially that opening “dear,” made Lewisham feel the strangest sensation in his throat and chest, almost as though he was going to cry.  So he laughed instead and read it again, and went to and fro in his little room with his eyes bright and that precious writing held in his hand.  That “dear” was just as if she had spoken—­a voice suddenly heard.  He thought of her farewell, clear and sweet, out of the shadow of the moonlit house.

But why that “If I never write again,” and that abrupt ending?  Of course he would think of her.

It was her only letter.  In a little time its creases were worn through.

Early in June came a loneliness that suddenly changed into almost intolerable longing to see her.  He had vague dreams of going to London, to Clapham to find her.  But you do not find people in Clapham as you do in Whortley.  He spent an afternoon writing and re-writing a lengthy letter, against the day when her address should come.  If it was to come.  He prowled about the village disconsolately, and at last set off about seven and retraced by moonlight almost every step of that one memorable walk of theirs.