After this had been going on for the space of three months, he came, one morning, down to breakfast. He felt very sick at heart; his pupils seemed so amazingly full of enthusiasm for minor concerns, and so absolutely lacking in it for the one thing needful, that he was cut to the quick and moved to much gentle wrath. And then these letters! They were fast becoming his Nemesis.
He ate his breakfast and watched with unwonted pleasure some dust motes dancing in a sunbeam, and raising his eyes to follow them, they unconsciously strayed farther out into the college quad, where the dew was still sparkling on every grass blade, and shimmering on every flower.
Mr. Waring felt quite cheerful and revived as he pushed away his plate and cup and began to open his letters. Letter after letter was laid down, a spasm of pain passing each time across his face, and more than once an audible groan escaped him.
At last he picked up a letter gingerly, as he handled all this variety of correspondence—the village mathematician being an unclean beast—but this letter seemed somehow different, he turned it over with growing interest, and even took the pains to examine the postmark, then he opened it and found a quite different production from any he had yet received.
First on opening it a curious indefinite scent struck on his nostrils. He sniffed it up perplexedly; some queer old memories began to stir in him, and he paused a moment to try and classify them, but he could not, so he set himself to examine the contents of the missive.
The answer given to his problem was accurate and the accompanying remarks clear, strong, and to the point, written in a woman’s hand and signed with a woman’s name, “Grace Selwyn”.
That letter was answered before the breakfast things were cleared away, and certain fresh problems enclosed which were not sent in any other direction.
Many letters went and came after that, containing problems and their answers, the answers always full of that strange, vague, delicious scent, which seemed to waft itself through the study and to remain there, caught with the dust motes in the sunbeam.
A longing and a yearning for those little notes began to take possession of Henry Waring and to disturb his mind. Old memories of the time when he wore frocks and toddled, began to haunt him, and his work was no longer done by reflex action.
He consulted a doctor, but as he only confided half his symptoms to that scientific person, quite suppressing the letters, the doctor felt rather out of it and prescribed quinine, which had no effect whatsoever.