Lovey stood off and pointed to it as it lay, white and oblong, on the sitting-room table.
“Give it to me with ’er own ’and,” he said, mysteriously. “Druv up to the door and asked the janitor to call me down. Told me to tell you that it wouldn’t be at ’alf past four, as she says in the note, but at five, and ’oped you wouldn’t keep ’er waitin’.”
I held it in my hand, turning it over. I felt sure of what was in it, but I didn’t know whether I was sorry or glad. Of course I should be glad from one point of view; but the points of view were so many. It would be all over now with the mission, for which my enthusiasm had so suddenly revived. When we had done this thing we should be discredited and ostracized by the people we knew best, and for some time to come.
I stood fingering the thing, feeling as I had felt now and then when we had given up a trench or a vantage-point we had been holding against odds. Wise as it might be to yield, it was, nevertheless, a pity, and only left ground that would have to be regained. There was moral strength, too, in the mere fact of holding. Not to hold any longer was a sign of weakness, however good the reason.
I broke the seal slowly, saying, as I did so, “Did she say where?”
“No, Slim; she didn’t say nowhere.”
“Only that I was not to keep her waiting.”
He thought again. “Punctual was ’er word.”
She needn’t, however, have said that. Of course I should be punctual. All might depend on my being on the spot at the moment when the clock struck. I still hesitated at drawing out the sheet. As a matter of fact I was wondering if she had received the sign she had talked about, and if so, what it was.