moments, his anxiety and dread. There came interludes—as he sat that afternoon opening envelope after envelope, and scribbling notes for replies—when he really felt as though what he were writing was true, and could describe with glowing precision all that strange psychic phase in which the Sub-Conscious self kicks up its heels and gambols at random unrestrained by the burden of objectivity.
Two letters in particular he wrote with the utmost care. One to a Cabinet Minister—an inveterate meddler who dabbled in such things in the intervals of his enormous occupations—the other to an ex-Cabinet Minister—another inveterate meddler who also dabbled in such things in the intervals of his.
Professor Higginson had never written to such great men before. He worked really hard, and he composed two masterpieces. Upon the addressing of his first ten envelopes he spent the best part of twenty minutes with books of reference at his side. He wrote courteously and at enormous length to a Great Lady whose coronet stood out upon the paper like a mountain, and whose signature he could yet hardly accept as real, so tremendous a thing did it seem to him that such an one as She should have entered his life.
