Arrived in Boston there was nothing for him to do but to eat an expensive dinner at a restaurant and go back again.  He did not return on foot.  He had had enough of his own thoughts.  They led him round and round in a circle without end.  He was ashamed, too, to perceive that they concerned themselves chiefly, not with his love for Olivia Guion, but with his enmity to Rupert Ashley.  It was the first time in his life that he was ever possessed by the fury to kill a man.  He wouldn’t have been satisfied to be rid of Ashley; he wanted to leap on him, to strike him, to choke him, to beat him to death.  Sitting with his eyes fixed on the table-cloth, from which the waiter had removed everything but the finger-bowl and the bill, and allowing the cigar that protruded between his knuckles to burn uselessly, he had already indulged in these imaginary exercises, not a little to his relief, before he shook himself and muttered:  “I’m a damned fool.”

The repetition of this statement, together with the dull belief that repetition engenders, braced him at last to paying his bill and taking the tram-car to Waverton.  He had formed a resolution.  It was still early, scarcely later than the hour at which he usually dined.  He had a long evening before him.  He would put it to use by packing his belongings.  Then he would disappear.  He might go at once to Stoughton, or he might travel no farther than the rooms he had engaged, and which he had occupied in former years, on the less attractive slope of Beacon Hill.  It would be all the same.  He would be out of the circle of interests that centered round Olivia Guion, and so free to come back to his senses.

He got so much elation out of this resolve that from the electric car to Rodney Temple’s house he walked with a swinging stride, whistling tunelessly beneath his breath.  He tried to think he was delivered from an extraordinary obsession and restored to health and sanity.  He planned to initiate Ashley as the new charge d’affaires without the necessity on his part of seeing Miss Guion again.

And yet, when he opened the door with his latch-key and saw a note lying on the table in the hail, his heart bounded as though it meant to stop beating.  It was sheer premonition that made him think the letter was for him.  He stooped and read the address before he had taken off his hat and while he was still tugging at his gloves: 

Peter Davenant, Esq.,
31 Charlesbank.

It was premonition again that told him the contents before he had read a line: 

     DEAR MR. DAVENANT,—­If you are quite free this evening, could you
     look in on me again?  Don’t come unless you have really nothing else
     to do.  Yours sincerely,

     OLIVIA GUION.