I said, “Might I think of her as ‘Margaret’?”
She said it was rather unconventional, but that she could not control my thoughts.
I said, “There you are wrong—Margaret.”
She said, “Oh, what are you saying, Mr. Eversleigh?”
I said I was thinking out loud.
On the doorstep she said, “Well, yes—Julian—you may write to me—sometimes. But I won’t promise to answer.”
Angel!
The next thing that awakened me was the coming of James.
After I had given him a suitable version of Margaret’s visit, he told me he was engaged to Eva. That was an astounding thing; but what was more astounding was that James had somehow got wind of the real spirit of my interview with Margaret.
I have called James Orlebar Cloyster a fool; I have called him a villain. I will never cease to call him a genius. For by some marvellous capacity for introspection, by some incredible projection of his own mind into other people’s matters, he was able to tax me to my face with an attempt to win his former fiancée’s affections. I tried to choke him off. I used every ounce of bluff I possessed. In vain. I left Walpole Street in a state approaching mental revolution.