ermined to call on him
at his rooms, and leave a little note with a cheque and a request that
he would pay Dicky and have done with him. "You'd better owe it to me
than to him, old chappy"; thus she wrote in the kindness and
impropriety of her heart. But Rickman never got that little note.

CHAPTER LXXII

Of all the consequences of that terrible dinner at Rankin's there was
none that Rickman resented more than the loss of his overcoat. As he
lay between his blankets he still felt all the lashings of the east
wind around his shivering body. He was awake all that night, and the
morning found him feverish with terror of the illness that might
overtake him before he attained his end. He stayed in bed all day to
prevent it, and because of his weakness, and for warmth.

But the next day there came a mild and merciful thaw, a tenderness of
Heaven that was felt even under the tiles in Howland Street. And the
morning of that day brought a thing that in all his dreams he had not
yet dreamed of, a letter from Lucia.

He read it kneeling on the floor of his garret, supporting himself by
the edge of the table. It was only a few lines in praise of the Elegy
(which had appeared in _The Planet_ the week before) and a postscript
that told him she would be staying at Court House with Miss Palliser
till the summer.

He knelt there a long time with his head bowed upon his arms. His
brains failed him when he tried to write an answer, and he put the
letter into his breast-pocket, where it lay like a loving hand against
his heart. And yet there was not a word of love in it.

The old indomitable hope rose in his heart again and he forced himself
to eat and drink, that he might have strength for the things he had to
do. That night he did not sleep, but lay wrapt in his beatific
passion. His longing was so intense that it created a vision of the
thing it longed for. It seemed to him that he heard Lucia's soft
footfall about his bed, that she came and sat beside his pillow, that
she bowed her head upon his breast, and that her long hair drifted
over him. For the beating of his own heart gave him the sense of a
presence beside him all night long, as he lay with his right arm flung
across his own starved body, guarding her letter, the letter that had
not a word of love in it.

In the morning he discovered that another letter had lain on his table
under Lucia's. It was from Dicky Pilkington, reminding him that it
wanted but seven da