All was calm and peaceful, and while Halcyone controlled herself to talk in an ordinary voice, the postman's knock was heard.

He passed the Professor's door on the road to Applewood and left the evening mail, when there chanced to be any.
Mrs.Porrit received the letters--three of them--and then she adjusted her spectacles, but took them off again.
"After all, since you are here, miss, perhaps as you write better than I you will be so good as to redirect them on to the master.

You know his address, as usual." And she named an old-fashioned hotel in Jermyn Street.
Halcyone took them in her cold, trembling fingers, and then nearly dropped them on the floor, for the top envelope was addressed in the handwriting of her beloved! She knew it well.

Had she not, during the past years, often seen such missives, from which the Professor had read her scraps of news?
She carried it to the light and scrutinized the postmark.

It was "London," and posted that very morning early! For a moment all was a blank, and she found herself grasping the back of Cheiron's big chair to prevent herself from falling.
John had been in London at the moment when she was waiting by the tree! What mystery was here?
At first the feeling was one of passionate relief.