to you before--I
would have wished to send you some flowers."

"Thank you," was all she answered--but her voice trembled a little.

"It was so stupid of me not to have asked you for your address
before--you must have thought it was so careless and unsympathetic."

"Oh! no"--.

"Won't you give it to me now that I may know in the future?"

"We are going to move--It would be useless--it is not decided where we
go yet."

I knew I dared not insist.

"Is there some place where I could be certain of a message reaching you
then? because I would have asked you to come to the flat to-day and not
out here if I could have found you."

She was silent for a moment. I could see she was in a corner--I felt an
awful brute but I had said it all quite naturally as any employer would
who was quite unaware that there could be any reluctance to give the
information, and I felt it was better to continue in this strain not to
render her suspicious.

After a second or two she gave the number of a stationer's shop in the
Avenue Mosart--.

"I pass there every day," she said.

I thanked her--.

"I hope you did not hurry back to your work--I can't bear to think that
perhaps you would have wished to remain at home now."

"No, it does not matter"--There was an infinite weariness in her
tone--A hopeless flatness I had never heard before, it moved me so that
I blurted out--.

"Oh! I have felt so anxious, and so sorry--I saw you in the _Bois_ two
Sundays ago in the thunder storm, and I tried to get near the path I
thought you would cross to offer you the carriage to return in, but I
missed you--Perhaps your little brother caught cold then?"

There was a sob in her voice--.

"Yes--will you--would you mind if we just did not speak of anything but
began work."

"Forgive me--I only want you to know that I'm so awfully sorry--and Oh,
if there was anything in the world I could do for you--would you not let
me?"

"I appreciate your wish--it is kind of you--but there is nothing--You
were going to begin the last chapter over again--Here is the old one--I
will take off my hat while you look at it," and she handed it to me.

Of course I could not say anything more--I had had a big bunch of
violets put on the table where she types, in Burton's room
adoining--they were the first forced ones which could be got in
Paris--and I had slipped a card by them with just "my sympathy" on it.

When she came back into the room hatless, her cheeks were