"She may die while I am away," he thought. "O God, if that were to
happen! If I were to come back and find her dead! Such things have been;
and men and women have borne them, and gone on living."
He had one more duty to perform before he left England. He had to say
good-bye to John Saltram, whom he had not seen since they parted that
night at Lidford. He could not leave England without some kind of
farewell to his old friend, and he had reserved this last evening for the
duty.
He went to the Pnyx on the chance of finding Saltram there, and failing
in that, ate his solitary dinner in the coffee-room. The waiters told him
that Mr. Saltram had not been at the club for some weeks. Gilbert did not
waste much time over his dinner, and went straight from the Pnyx to the
Temple, where John Saltram had a second-floor in Figtree-court.
Mr. Saltram was at home. It was his own sonorous voice which answered
Gilbert's knock, bidding him enter with a muttered curse upon the
interruption by way of addendum. The room into which Mr. Fenton went upon
receiving this unpromising invitation was in a state of chaotic
confusion. An open portmanteau sprawled upon the floor, and a whole
wardrobe of masculine garments seemed to have been shot at random on to
the chairs near it; a dozen soda-water bottles, full and empty, were
huddled in one corner; a tea-tray tottered on the extreme edge of a table
heaped with dusty books and papers; and at a desk in the centre of the
room, with a great paraffin lamp flaring upon his face as he wrote, sat
John Saltram, surrounded by fallen slips of copy, writing as if to win a
wager.
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