I was all impatience till I read the very latest line, fearing there would be some qualification that I could not meet. When I found that it had resolved itself into a question so easily solved I sprang up and shouted in glee.
She would go! She was going! My dream was to become a reality!
Seizing a sheet of paper I began to write a note in response to the one I had received. She might get it only a short time before the hour of two, but it would prepare her for my coming, and clinch the bargain a little sooner. For five minutes I wrote rapidly, and when I stopped to peruse the lines I tore up the sheet.
Had she been my sweetheart for ages I could hardly have used more extravagant language than I had been guilty of on that first page. Would I never learn the first principles of common sense? I had begun with the words, "My Darling Marjorie," and gone on to state that "your sweet letter fills me with supreme happiness;" "I shall not breathe until once more I am in your loved presence.
"Already I contemplate those heavenly hours when you and I will sail out upon the seas of Elysium," was another sample sentence, a type of the others. I paused in the rapid walk that I took up and down my room to look in my mirror, and was almost frightened at what I saw there. My cheeks were suffused with unusual color, my eyes dilated, my hair dishevelled, where I had run my nervous hands through it. My collar was rumpled, my tie disarranged, and in a room where the mercury was not above seventy the beads of perspiration stood on my forehead.
Dame! I went to the bath-room that formed a part of my little suite, let the icy water run till it filled the bowl and bathed my hands and face in it. Slowly I dried them with the towel, and then applied bay rum in liberal quantity.
I realized disagreeably for the hundredth time how that awful neurasthenia had left its traces upon me, and that if I was ever to wholly recover I must regain control of my emotions. With this in view I again seated myself at my desk and indited the following:
Dear Miss May:—It is with much satisfaction that I have perused your letter. The amount necessary to purchase the articles you need shall be left entirely to you. I will furnish whatever sum you decide upon. I will be at your lodging promptly at two. If there is anything else that occurs to you, please consider yourself at full liberty to mention it then. In the meantime I am going to Cook's office to pay the balance on the two rooms, as the time for doing so will soon expire.
Your Friend,
D.C.