As he reached his flat ten o'clock struck from St. James' Church. He
asked the porter whether any one had wanted him during his
absence--whether any one was waiting for him now--(some friend had told
him that he might come up and use his spare room one night that week).
No, no one had been. There was no one there waiting.
Great was his surprise, therefore, when opening the door of his flat he
found some one standing there, one hand resting on the table, his face
turned towards the open door. Stronger, however, than Wilbraham's
surprise was his immediate conviction that he knew his visitor well,
and this was curious because the face was, undoubtedly strange to him.
"I beg your pardon," Wilbraham said to him, hesitating.
"I wanted to see you," the Stranger said, smiling.
When Wilbraham was telling me this part of his story he seemed to be
enveloped--"enveloped" is the word that best conveys my own experience
of him--by some quite radiant happiness. He smiled at me confidentially
as though he were telling me something that I had experienced with him
and that must give me the same happiness that it gave to him.
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