rms
that June brings about so rapidly, to cease as suddenly. The thing was
so natural, that, when Raphael had looked out and seen some pale clouds
driven over by a gust of wind, he did not think of looking at the piece
of skin. He lay back again in the corner of his carriage, which was very
soon rolling upon its way.

The next day found him back in his home again, in his own room, beside
his own fireside. He had had a large fire lighted; he felt cold.
Jonathan brought him some letters; they were all from Pauline. He opened
the first one without any eagerness, and unfolded it as if it had
been the gray-paper form of application for taxes made by the revenue
collector. He read the first sentence:

"Gone! This really is a flight, my Raphael. How is it? No one can tell
me where you are. And who should know if not I?"

He did not wish to learn any more. He calmly took up the letters
and threw them in the fire, watching with dull and lifeless eyes the
perfumed paper as it was twisted, shriveled, bent, and devoured by the
capricious flames. Fragments that fell among the ashes allowed him to
see the beginning of a sentence, or a half-burnt thought or word; he
took a pleasure in deciphering them--a sort of mechanical amusement.

"Sitting at your door--expected--Caprice--I obey--Rivals--I, never!--thy
Pauline--love--no more of Pauline?--If you had wished to leave me for
ever, you would not have deserted me--Love eternal--To die----"

The words caused him a sort of remorse; he seized the tongs, and rescued
a last fragment of the letter from the flames.

"I have murmured," so Pauline wrote, "but I have never complained, my
Raphael! If you have left me so far behind you, it was doubtless because
you wished to hide some heavy grief from me. Perhaps you will kill me
one of these days, but you are too good to torture me. So do not go away
from me like this. There! I can bear the worst of torment, if only I
am at your side. Any grief that you could cause me would not be grief.
There is far more love in my heart for you than I have ever yet shown
you. I can endure anything, except this weeping far away from you, this
ignorance of your----"

Raphael laid the scorched scrap on the mantelpiece, then all at once he
flung it into the fire. The bit of paper was too clearly a symbol of his
own love and luckless existence.

"Go and find M. Bianchon," he told Jonathan.

Horace came and found Raphael in bed.

"Can you prescribe a draug