h a certain queer
emotion.

"You will do me the justice to remember that I have never asked you for
anything," said Ferrand. "Thank you a thousand times. Good-bye!"

He again wrung his patron's hand in his damp grasp, and, going out, left
Shelton with an odd sensation in his throat. "You will do me the justice
to remember that I have never asked you for anything." The phrase seemed
strange, and his mind flew back over all this queer acquaintanceship.
It was a fact: from the beginning to the end the youth had never really
asked for anything. Shelton sat down on his bed, and began to read the
letter in his hand. It was in French.

DEAR MADAME (it ran),

It will be insupportable to me, after your kindness, if you take me for
ungrateful. Unfortunately, a crisis has arrived which plunges me into
the necessity of leaving your hospitality. In all lives, as you are well
aware, there arise occasions that one cannot govern, and I know that you
will pardon me that I enter into no explanation on an event which gives
me great chagrin, and, above all, renders me subject to an imputation
of ingratitude, which, believe me, dear Madame, by no means lies in my
character. I know well enough that it is a breach of politeness to
leave you without in person conveying the expression of my profound
reconnaissance, but if you consider how hard it is for me to be
compelled to abandon all that is so distinguished in domestic life,
you will forgive my weakness. People like me, who have gone through
existence with their eyes open, have remarked that those who are endowed
with riches have a right to look down on such as are not by wealth and
breeding fitted to occupy the same position. I shall never dispute a
right so natural and salutary, seeing that without this distinction,
this superiority, which makes of the well-born and the well-bred a race
apart, the rest of the world would have no standard by which to rule
their lives, no anchor to throw into the depths of that vast sea of
fortune and of misfortune on which we others drive before the wind.
It is because of this, dear Madame, that I regard myself so doubly
fortunate to have been able for a few minutes in this bitter pilgrimage
called life, to sit beneath the tree of safety. To have been able, if
only for an hour, to sit and set the pilgrims pass, the pilgrims with
the blistered feet and ragged clothes, and who yet, dear Madame, guard
within their hearts a certain joy in life, illegal j