Once or twice I
glanced up, expecting to find some one in the room, that the door had
opened unobserved and Annie was waiting for instructions. I heard the
buses thundering across the bridge. I was aware of Oakley Street.
Montenegro and the blue Adriatic melted into the October haze along that
depressing Embankment that aped a riverbank, and sentences from the
letter flashed before my eyes and stung me. Picking it up and reading it
through more carefully, I rang the bell and told Annie to find the
blouses and pack them for the post, showing her finally the written
description, and resenting the superior smile with which she at once
interrupted. "I know them, sir," and disappeared.
But it was not the blouses: it was that exasperating thing "between the
lines" that put an end to my work with its elusive teasing nuisance. The
first sharp impression is alone of value in such a case, for once
analysis begins the imagination constructs all kinds of false
interpretation. The more I thought, the more I grew fuddled. The letter,
it seemed to me, wanted to say another thing; instead the eight sheets
conveyed it merely. It came to the edge of disclosure, then halted.
There was something on the writer's mind, and I felt uneasy.
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