He sat long, without attempting to do anything.  About midnight he rose as if to leave the room, but, instead of doing so, paced the floor for a few minutes; then he opened a certain drawer in his writing-table, and took out the morocco case which contained Emily’s letters.  He slipped off the band.  The letters were still in their envelopes, and lay in the order in which he had received them.  He drew forth the first and began to read it.  He read them all.

Till the early daybreak he remained in the room, sometimes walking about, sometimes seating himself to re-read this letter and that.  Twenty-four hours ago these written words would have touched his heart indeed, but only as does the memory of an irrecoverable joy; he could have read them, and still have gone to meet Beatrice as usual, or with but a little more than his ordinary reserve in her presence.  It was otherwise now.  The very voice had spoken again, and its tones lingering with him made the written characters vocal; each word uttered itself as it met his eye; Emily spoke still.  The paper was old, the ink faded, but the love was of this hour.  He grew fevered, and it was the fever of years ago, which had only been in appearance subdued; it had lurked still in his blood, and now asserted itself with the old dire mastery.

He marvelled that he had suffered her to leave him without even learning where she lived.  He could not understand what his mood had been, what motives had weighed with him.  He had not been conscious of a severe struggle to resist a temptation; the temptation had not, in fact, yet formed itself.  What was her own thought?  She had answered his questions freely, perhaps would have told him without hesitation the address of her lodgings.  Clearly she no longer sought to escape him.  But that, he reminded himself, was only the natural response to his own perfectly calm way of speaking; she could not suggest embarrassments when it was his own cue to show that he felt none.  She was still free, it seemed, but what was her feeling towards him?  Did she still love him?  Was the mysterious cause which had parted them still valid?

When already it was daylight, he went upstairs and lay down on the bed; he was weary, but not with the kind of weariness that brings sleep.  His mind was occupied with plans for discovering where Emily lived.  Mrs. Baxendale had professed to have lost sight of her; Wilfrid saw now that there was a reason for concealing the truth, and felt that in all probability his friend had misled him; in any case, he could not apply to her.  Was there a chance of a second meeting in the same place?  Emily was sure to be free on Saturday afternoon; but only in one case would she go to the park again—­if she desired to see him, and imagined a corresponding desire on his side.  And that was an unlikely thing; granting she loved him, it was not in Emily’s character to scheme thus, under the circumstances.

Yet why had she chosen to come and live in London?