"Do you?" asked Clifford eagerly.
"Yes," the boy answered. "She was not the sort of chum to break her word."
"She promised to write to me," Clifford said. "But I have not heard."
"Oh, you'll hear," Alan said staunchly.
But that was several weeks before Christmas; and now Christmas had nearly come, and Katharine's promised visit to Alan had not been paid, nor her promised letter to Clifford been received.
And the man had given up expecting it. So now he did not look up from his work. He had looked up many times on other occasions and been disappointed. He had gone back to his work many times with a sore feeling of personal bereftness, as though fate had put him outside the inner heart of things. So now he bent over his desk, immersed in some abstruse calculation. After an hour, he rose and went to his laboratory to give some instructions to his new assistant, a young Welshman from Aberystwith, who had arrived that morning. A case of glass apparatus had just been brought in. He lingered to see if they were in good condition. He came out, and then went back to fetch his notebook, which he had left on the bench. He stood for a moment looking at the enlargements which he had carried out since his return from Norway.
"Alan and Knutty will be pleased," he said.
"I had hoped that she too would—would see them," he thought. "I hoped—ah, I don't know what I hoped. I was mad."
He returned to his study and closed the door. He stood leaning against the mantelpiece, thinking. His grave face looked sad. He had reconquered his power of working. Peace was in his house; but sore loneliness and longing were in his heart. Still, he was working, and with satisfaction to that part of his nature which had been so greatly harassed by poor Marianne's merciless turbulence.
"After all, I only asked to work and to be at peace," he said aloud, as if in answer to some insistent disputant.