Dick had gone. I looked at the couch, it was empty, and a note was
stuck by his pin into the sofa pillow. I sat up in bed, and by
leaning forward and extending my arm I got hold of the pillow, and
thence the paper and read it.
"8 A.M.--You are still asleep and I don't like to wake you, but I
want to be back at my place by nine, so I am departing like the
guest of an Arab. If you have nothing better to do this evening,
come and dine with me. Army and Navy. Seven."
"Very good," I thought; I put the note and the pin on the table
beside me, and got up. The headache was gone, and the head felt none
the worse for it. The sun was streaming in through the blinds now.
The gloom, the apprehensions, the pain of the previous night, had
all cleared from the field together. I dressed and shaved with a
steady hand, thinking, in a sane, easy way, very different from the
inflamed, convulsive working of the brain last night. The work was
set afloat in Paris--I should soon find readers on the asphalt--that
quarter of my sky was clear. As for the sudden darkening squall that
had sprung up in the other quarter, formerly so serene, the quarter
over which reigned Lucia's star--it was only a squall, it would
pass. She must be capable of being roused again to those feelings
she had once known. And if I had nothing else, I had, at least, in
my favour the sheer force and intensity of my own passion--which is,
after all, the weapon under which a woman quickest sinks.
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