“One day I came across her portrait in an illustrated paper. I will not dwell upon my emotions. It was a face—haunting, ethereal—which exactly embodied my conception of the writer. Looking into its eyes, I could fathom at a glance the unmistakable source of ‘Night-Lights’; the very ‘Evanescence of Evadne’ spoke in that ductile form. From that moment my existence became little more than a devouring hunger, a prolonged swoon of passion.”
He finished the sandwiches and started on a cream tart before he spoke again.
“One day, after a struggle with myself, I did a desperate thing—I wrote, through her publishers, to Miss Cornelia Cox. I wrote palpitating, in a delicious tremor; I pronounced myself the most faithful, the most adoring of her disciples; my pen travelled on the wings of intoxication. To my rapture she answered me.”
He stopped to take a second tumbler of whisky and soda.
“She answered me,” he said, gasping; “and I answered her answer. She wrote again. By degrees a regular correspondence was established between us. I tasted her soul in periodic budgets—a delirious experience; but those sacred, those melodious groves must remain undesecrated of the outer throng. You will understand and excuse me, Mr Balm.”
“Certainly,” said Gilead.
“O!” cried the obese gentleman, “why had I not, in those exquisite first days, the courage of my convictions! I desired, and always desired a still more intimate union of souls, and I delayed until delay became fatal. I was not then by many degrees what you see me now. Though constitutionally of a full habit of body, it had remained for the sun of passion, it appeared, to develop in me this extreme fruitiness. For two years now we have corresponded, and I have been swelling all the time; and during all the time, Mr Balm, we have never yet once met.”
“Not?” said Gilead. “Well, what then? For all Miss Cox knows, your present proportions may have been your first.”
While he spoke, Mr Bundy had finished the last of the buns and cream-cakes. He now struck his breast, and gazed up to heaven with a very full look.
“Impossible,” he said; “for—the truth must be confessed—we have latterly exchanged photographs, and the one of myself that I sent her was taken years ago when I was slim and comely.”