Godfrey shrugged his shoulders over Percival's note. It was irrational, no doubt, but Thorne had a right to please himself, and might as well take care of his pride, since he had not much else to take care of. So he attempted no persuasion, but simply sent any Fordborough news and forwarded occasional letters from Mrs. Middleton and Sissy. As the autumn wore on, Percival began to feel strange as he opened the envelopes and saw the handwriting which belonged to his old life. He had an absurd idea that the letters should not have come to _him_--that his former self, the self Sissy had known, was gone. He read her letters by the light of what Hammond had told him, and saw the delicate wording by which she tried to show her sympathy, yet almost repelled his confidence. She was so anxious not to thrust herself into his secrets--it was so evident that she would not be troublesome, but would wait with shut eyes, as Hammond had said, for a birthday surprise and triumph! O poor little Sissy! O faith which he felt within himself no strength to vindicate! He answered her in carefully weighed sentences, and smiled as he wrote them down because they amused him--a smile sadder than tears. Percival Thorne was dead, and he was some one else, trying to think what Percival would have said, and to hide his death from Sissy, lest her heart should break for pity.
It was very foolish? Yes. But if you had parted yourself from every one you knew; if for five months you had never heard a friendly word; if you had a secret to hide and a part to play; if you lived alone, surrounded by faces of people with whom you had no faintest touch of sympathy--faces which were to you like those of swarming Chinese or men and women in a nightmare,--perhaps you might have some thoughts and fancies less calm and less rational than of old. And the more changed Percival felt himself, the more he shrank from the friends he had left.
November came. One day he looked at the date on the office almanac and remembered that it was exactly a year since he went down to Brackenhill and heard of old Bridgman's death. He could not repress a short sudden laugh. It was half under his breath, but his neighbor, who was at that moment gazing fiercely into space and turning a sentence, heard it, and felt that it was in mockery of him. Percival was thinking how seriously he had considered that important question, "Would he stand as the Liberal candidate for Fordborough?" Percival Thorne, Esq., M.P.! He might well laugh as he sat at his desk filling in a bundle of notices. But from that moment the sallow youth on his right hated him with a deadly hatred.