y to be got through," he thinks merely, as Nature's most
precious gift--the light--pours glowing through the panes.

When half-an-hour later he opens his door to take in his boots, he
finds two letters with them, and at the sight of one his heart
beats hard.

The other is in the girl's handwriting, and he lays it on his
toilet-table, with the thought, "Asking me to go and see her, I
suppose," and turns to the other with a mad impatience.

This is evidently the official letter with reference to his
post--the post that means to him but this one thing: her
possession.

He bursts it open, and in less than two seconds his eye takes in
its news: he has the appointment.

The blood leaps over his face, and an exultant fire runs through
his frame and along his veins.

He replaces the letter quietly in its cover with but the slightest
tremor of his fingers.

Then he gets up from the bedside and stands in the middle of the
room, looking through the sparkling panes.

"I have her!" he is thinking. "Yes, by God! at last I have her!"

The day is glorified; life is transfigured.

Through his whole body mounts that boundless exhilaration of desire
on the point of satisfaction. Not momentary desire, easily and
recently awakened, but the long desire that has been goaded and
baited to fury through weeks and months of repression, and tempered
to a terrible acuteness in pain and suffering, like steel by flame.

And now triumph, and a delight beyond expression, bounds like an
electrified pulse throughout all his strong, vigorous frame.

The lines seem to fade from his face, the mouth relaxes, and then
he laughs, as he makes a step towards the window, flings it open,
and leans out into the keen air.

"At last I can speak out decently. No one could think I cared for
her money, or any of that rot now. How unexpected!--this morning!
Now I can tell her I'm free, independent! I am glad I waited--it
was much better. Far better, as I said, to be patient. Last night I
almost--and now I'm very glad I didn't."

He draws his head back, and turns to the glass to shave with a
light heart.

As he does so, he sees her letter again, and picks it up. "You
darling!" he thinks, "I'll make you understand all now."

Some miles westward of the pier, some fathoms deep, out of reach of
the quiet sunlight lying on the surface, tosses the girl's body,
senseless and pulseless, with all the million possibilities of
pleasure that filled those keen ne