“Eris.”
When Annan returned about six to order dinner and flowers, and to dress for the rôle of host, he found her telegram.
Whatever is snatched away from man or beast instantly becomes disproportionately desirable.
It was so with Annan. Suddenly he realised how much he wanted Eris. Really he had not thought much about this dinner, except immediately after their meeting at the Looking Glass.
He had borne it in mind, impatiently the first day, pleasurably the second, with complacent equanimity thereafter. But he had remembered it.
For the moments of surprise and emotion so charmingly experienced in the projection room had little else except surprise for a foundation. Curiosity alone perpetuated them.
To a young man agreeably immersed in his own affairs such episodes became incidents very quickly. Only an unexpected obstacle evokes afresh circumstances and emotions which have become vague.
Her telegram did this. Disappointment, retrospection, regret, annoyance, sentimental impatience,—these in sequence possessed the young man as he sat holding her telegram. The only mitigation seemed to be in her statement concerning her broken heart. That flattered and helped.
He was in no mood to dine out, but he didn’t want to dine at home alone. The conflict continued, full of sentimental indecision.
It ended by his ringing for Mrs. Sniffen, ordering a cold bite on a tray, stripping to undershirt, chamber-robe, and slippers, and plunging into his novel, now well under way.