an advance, which at that time could not possibly have
been misconstrued; when they landed me, a few later, there was another
and perhaps a better one. But this was the last summer of the late
century, and already I was beginning to get about like a lamplighter on
my two sticks. Now, young men about town, on two walking-sticks, in the
year of grace 1900, meant only one thing. Quite a stimulating thing in
the beginning, but even as I write, in this the next winter but one, a
national irritation of which the name alone might prevent you from
reading another word.

Catherine's handwriting, on the contrary, was still stimulating, if
indeed I ever found it more so in the foolish past. It had not altered
in the least. There was the same sweet pedantry of the Attic _e_, the
same superiority to the most venial abbreviation, the same inconsistent
forest of exclamatory notes, thick as poplars across the channel. The
present plantation started after my own Christian name, to wit "Dear
Duncan!!" Yet there was nothing Germanic in Catherine's ancestry; it was
only her apologetic little way of addressing me as though nothing had
ever happened, of asking whether she might. Her own old tact and charm
were in that tentative burial of the past. In the first line she had all
but won my entire forgiveness; but the very next interfered with the
effect.

"You promised to do anything for me!"

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 sympa