Best did bring her a letter, but it was not to cancel the
appointment, only to say he was not surprised at her horror of the male
sex, but that she must beware of false generalizations. Life was still a
wonderful and beautiful thing--_vide_ poem enclosed. He was counting the
minutes till Wednesday afternoon. It was surely a popular mistake that
only sixty went to the hour.
This chronometrical reflection recurred to him even more poignantly in
the hour that he circumambulated the pond in Kensington Gardens. Had she
forgotten--had her husband locked her up? What could have happened? It
seemed six hundred minutes, ere, at ten past five she came tripping
daintily towards him. His brain had been reduced to insanely devising
problems for his pupils--if a man walks two strides of one and a half
feet a second round a lake fifty acres in area, in how many turns will
he overtake a lady who walks half as fast and isn't there?--but the
moment her pink parasol loomed on the horizon, all his long misery
vanished in an ineffable peace and uplifting. He hurried, bare-headed,
to clasp her little gloved hand.
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