I could forgive Raffles for that, at any rate! In another breath
I should have cried aloud: for the girl with the candle, the girl
in her ball-dress, at dead of night, the girl with the letter for
the post, was the last girl on God's wide earth whom I should have
chosen thus to encounter - a midnight intruder in the very house
where I had been reluctantly received on her account!
I forgot Raffles. I forgot the new and unforgivable grudge I had
against him now. I forgot his very hand across my mouth, even
before he paid me the compliment of removing it. There was the only
girl in all the world: I had eyes and brains for no one and for
nothing else. She had neither seen nor heard us, had looked neither
to the right hand nor the left. But a small oak table stood on the
opposite side of the hall; it was to this table that she went. On
it was one of those boxes in which one puts one's letters for the
post; and she stooped to read by her candle the times at which this
box was cleared.
The loud clock ticked and ticked. She was standing at her full
height now, her candle on the table, her letter in both hands, and
in her downcast face a sweet and pitiful perplexity that drew the
tears to my eyes.
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