Page:Twilight.djvu/103

Rh taking no drugs, doing a little more each day, in the way of moving about. And yet I could not call myself convalescent. My legs were stiff and my back heavy. I had no feeling of returning vigour. What little I did I forced myself to do. I had hardly the energy to finish the letters. Had it not been for Dr. Kennedy I don't believe, at this stage, I should have finished them! Although the next two or three set me thinking, and I was again visualising the writers. Not that Gabriel Stanton betrayed himself in his letters, as Margaret did in hers. I had to reconcile him with the donnish master of Greek roots, whom I had met and been ignored by, in Greyfriars' Square. This was his answer to her last effusion.

No. 13.118 Greyfriars' Square,

19th February, 1902. Dear Mrs. Capel:—

I have read your letter ten—twenty times; my business day was filled and transformed by it. Now it is midnight and I am alone in the stillness of my room, the routine of the day and the evening over, and my brain, not always very quick, alight with the wonderment of your words, and my restless anxiety to respond. Don't, I implore you, belittle the possibility of friendship!

Surely the value of it is only proved by its needs?

May I not say that in this crisis in your life friendship may be much to you. Can I hope that my privilege may be to fill the need?