Raphael went out, not uncomforted.  He would write to her at once.  He got letter-paper at the nearest restaurant and wrote, “Dear Miss Ansell.”  The rest was a blank.  He had not the least idea how to renew the relationship after what seemed an eternity of silence.  He stared helplessly round the mirrored walls, seeing mainly his own helpless stare.  The placard “Smoking not permitted till 8 P.M.,” gave him a sudden shock.  He felt for his pipe, and ultimately found it stuck, half full of charred bird’s eye, in his breast-pocket.  He had apparently not been smoking for some hours.  That completed his perturbation.  He felt he had undergone too much that day to be in a fit state to write a judicious letter.  He would go home and rest a bit, and write the letter—­very diplomatically—­in the evening.  When he got home, he found to his astonishment it was Friday evening, when letter-writing is of the devil.  Habit carried him to synagogue, where he sang the Sabbath hymn, “Come, my beloved, to meet the bride,” with strange sweet tears and a complete indifference to its sacred allegorical signification.  Next afternoon he haunted the publishers’ doorstep with the brilliant idea that Mr. Armitage sometimes crossed it.  In this hope, he did not write the letter; his phrases, he felt, would be better for the inspiration of that gentleman’s presence.  Meanwhile he had ample time to mature them, to review the situation in every possible light, to figure Esther under the most poetical images, to see his future alternately radiant and sombre.  Four long summer days of espionage only left him with a heartache, and a specialist knowledge of the sort of persons who visit publishers.  A temptation to bribe the office-boy he resisted as unworthy.

Not only had he not written that letter, but Mr. Henry Goldsmith’s edict and Mrs. Henry Goldsmith’s invitation were still unacknowledged.  On Thursday morning a letter from Addie indirectly reminded him both of his remissness to her hostess, and of the existence of The Flag of Judah.  He remembered it was the day of going to press; a vision of the difficulties of the day flashed vividly upon his consciousness; he wondered if his ex-lieutenants were finding new ones.  The smell of the machine-room was in his nostrils; it co-operated with the appeal of his good-nature to draw him to his successor’s help.  Virtue proved its own reward.  Arriving at eleven o’clock, he found little Sampson in great excitement, with the fountain of melody dried up on his lips.—­

“Thank God!” he cried.  “I thought you’d come when you heard the news.”

“What news?”

“Gideon the member for Whitechapel’s dead.  Died suddenly, early this morning.”

“How shocking!” said Raphael, growing white.