How can it be otherwise? Our lives are woven along
and across with women. Some men find the reality of their lives in
women, others, as we were saying just now, in bishops."
"Tell me about the woman who asked you to come here? Did you love her?
And what prevented you from coming here with her?"
"It is one of the oddest stories--odd only because it is like myself.
Every character creates it own stories; we are like spools, and each
spool fills itself up with a different-coloured thread. The story,
such as it is, began one evening in Victoria Street at the end of a
long day's work. A letter began it. She wrote asking me to dine with
her, and her letter was most welcome, for I had no plans for that
evening. I do not know if you know that curious dread of life which
steals through the twilight; it had just laid its finger on my
shoulder when the bell rang, and I said: 'My visitor is welcome,
whoever she or he may be.' The visitor would have only spent a few
minutes perhaps with me, but Gertrude's letter--that was her name--was
a promise of a long and pleasant evening, for it was more than a mere
invitation to dinner. She wrote: 'I have not asked any one to meet
you, but you will not mind dining alone with me.
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