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When two or three days had passed, curiosity drew me towards the Christophersons’ dwelling. Walking along the opposite side of the street, I looked up at their window, and there was the face of the old bibliophile. Evidently he was standing at the window in idleness, perhaps in trouble. At once he beckoned to me; but before I could knock at the house-door he had descended, and came out.

‘May I walk a little way with you?’ he asked.

There was worry on his features. For some moments we went on in silence.

‘So you have changed your mind about leaving London?’ I said, as if carelessly.

‘You have heard from Mr. Pomfret? Well–yes, yes–I think we shall stay where we are–for the present.’

Never have I seen a man more painfully embarrassed. He walked with head bent, shoulders stooping; and shuffled, indeed, rather than walked. Even so might a man bear himself who felt guilty of some peculiar meanness.

Presently words broke from him.

‘To tell you the truth, there’s a difficulty about the books.’ He glanced furtively at me, and I saw he was trembling in all his nerves. ‘As you see, my circumstances are not brilliant.’ He half-choked himself with a crow. ‘The fact is we were offered a house in the country, on certain conditions, by a relative of Mrs. Christopherson; and, unfortunately, it turned out that my library is regarded as an objection–a fatal objection. We have quite reconciled ourselves to staying where we are.’

I could not help asking, without emphasis, whether Mrs. Christopherson would have cared for life in the country. But no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I regretted them, so evidently did they hit my companion in a tender place.

‘I think she would have liked it,’ he answered, with a strangely pathetic look at me, as if he entreated my forbearance.

‘But,’ I suggested, ‘couldn’t you make some arrangements about the books? Couldn’t you take a room for them in another house, for instance?’

Christopherson’s face was sufficient answer; it reminded me of his pennilessness. ‘We think no more about it,’ he said. ‘The matter is settled–quite settled.’

There was no pursuing the subject. At the next parting of the ways we took leave of each other.

I think it was not more than a week later when I received a postcard from Pomfret. He wrote: ‘Just as I expected. Mrs. C. seriously ill.’ That was all.

Mrs. C. could, of course, only mean Mrs. Christopherson. I mused over the message–it took hold of my imagination, wrought upon my feelings; and that afternoon I again walked along the interesting street.

There was no face at the window. After a little hesitation I decided to call at the house and speak with Pomfret’s aunt. It was she who opened the door to me.

We had never seen each other, but when I mentioned my name and said I was anxious to have news of Mrs. Christopherson, she led me into a sitting-room, and began to talk confidentially.

She was a good-natured Yorkshirewoman, very unlike the common London landlady. ‘Yes, Mrs. Christopherson had been taken ill two days ago. It began with a long fainting fit. She had a feverish, sleepless night; the doctor was sent for; and he had her removed out of the stuffy, book-cumbered bedroom into another chamber, which luckily happened to be vacant. There she lay utterly weak and worn, all but voiceless, able only to smile at her husband, who never moved from the bedside day or night. He, too,’ said the landlady, ‘would soon break down: he looked like a ghost, and seemed “half-crazed.”‘

‘What,’ I asked, ‘could be the cause of this illness?’

The good woman gave me an odd look, shook her head, and murmured that the reason was not far to seek.

‘Did she think,’ I asked, ‘that disappointment might have something to do with it?’

Why, of course she did. For a long time the poor lady had been all but at the end of her strength, and this came as a blow beneath which she sank.