No, he had no anxiety about Miss Marty.

But could he be sure of himself?
Had he really and truly and for ever put the ambitions of public life behind him?
Might they not some day re-awaken as this present wound healed and ceased to smart?
If he sent this letter, he had burnt his boats.

He halted before the table and stood for a while considering; stood there so long that his pipe went out unheeded.

Ought he not to re-write his proposal and word it so as to leave himself a loophole?
As he conned the name on the address, by some trick of memory he found himself repeating Miss Marty's own protest against the Millennium: "Why couldn't we be let alone, to go on comfortably ?" Confound the Millennium! Was it at the bottom of this too?
The plaguy thing had a knack of intruding itself, just now, into all he undertook, and always mischievously.

It was unsettling--Miss Marty's word again--infernally unsettling.