"Well, my mother will soon call to see you; and, meantime, I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll write--just any cheerful nonsense that comes
into my head--shall I?"

"Good, gallant heart!" thought I to myself; but I shook my head,
smiling, and said, "Never think of it: impose on yourself no such task.
_You_ write to _me_!--you'll not have time."

"Oh! I will find or make time. Good-by!"

He was gone. The heavy door crashed to: the axe had fallen--the pang
was experienced.

Allowing myself no time to think or feel--swallowing tears as if they
had been wine--I passed to Madame's sitting-room to pay the necessary
visit of ceremony and respect. She received me with perfectly
well-acted cordiality--was even demonstrative, though brief, in her
welcome. In ten minutes I was dismissed. From the salle-a-manger I
proceeded to the refectory, where pupils and teachers were now
assembled for evening study: again I had a welcome, and one not, I
think, quite hollow. That over, I was free to repair to the dormitory.

"And will Graham really write?" I questioned, as I sank tired on the
edge of the bed.

Reason, coming stealthily up to me through the twilight of that long,
dim chamber, whispered sedately--"He may write once. So kind is his
nature, it may stimulate him for once to make the effort. But it
_cannot_ be continued--it _may_ not be repeated. Great were that folly
which should build on such a promise--insane that credulity which
should mistake the transitory rain-pool, holding in its hollow one
draught, for the perennial spring yielding the supply of seasons."

I bent my head: I sat thinking an hour longer. Reason still whispered
me, laying on my shoulder a withered hand, and frostily touching my ear
with the chill blue lips of eld.

"If," muttered she, "if he _should_ write, what then? Do you meditate
pleasure in replying? Ah, fool! I warn you! Brief be your answer. Hope
no delight of heart--no indulgence of intellect: grant no expansion to
feeling--give holiday to no single faculty: dally with no friendly
exchange: foster no genial intercommunion...."

"But I have talked to Graham and you did not chide," I pleaded.

"No," said she, "I needed not. Talk for you is good discipline. You
converse imperfectly. While you speak, there can be no oblivion of
inferiority--no encouragement to delusion: pain, privation, penury
stamp your language...."

"But," I again broke in, "where the bodily presence is weak and the
speech c