Long years passed, during which I neither saw nor heard of my friend.
I knew that he had married, and had had a somewhat successful career as a barrister in London, and that was all I knew about him.
After staying for a week or two with friends in the neighbourhood of Cambridge in 1896, I had taken rooms for a month in Cambridge, inviting one of these friends to stay with me as my guest.
We came upon these special rooms in a curious way. Having worked through a list of those suggested to us by a friend, none of which quite suited, I heard, by the merest chance, that possibly I might find what I wanted in Trumpington Street, at the house of a very respectable Cambridge tradesman. We went there, but only to find that the rooms vacant could not be ready for me at the time specified, as some old customers were coming to them for three or four days.
"But I want them for a month," I expostulated.
The landlady was firm; she could not disappoint these people after promising to take them in.
In spite of my disappointment, I admired her so much for this strict sense of honour that I determined to look at the rooms in case of requiring any at a future date.
We went upstairs. The rooms were exactly what I required, and very clean and well furnished, so it ended by my agreeing to take them for a week later, although at a considerable inconvenience.
It was in this casual way that I entered the house about the middle of May 1896. My friend was not able to join me until the morning after my arrival, so I spent the first evening alone, and retired to bed rather early. I slept well enough during the earlier part of the night, but awoke about two a.m., having had a tiresome, worrying dream about the very man I have mentioned, who had certainly not been in my thoughts for many months, or possibly years.
Even when fully awake, his influence was still in the room with me, and falling asleep again, there he was once more in my dream, twitting me with my want of appreciation of him in the past, and suggesting what a much more successful career I might have had through marrying him. This sort of thing went on for the rest of the night. Either I woke up with a disagreeable start, still feeling the man's influence in the room, or sank into a troubled sleep, to be once more at the mercy of his reproaches!