to read, _a coups de dictionnaire_, was
_Ships that Pass in the Night_. In spite of the great thing that
you have done for me, it is inevitable that we should be such
passing vessels. It is life. If, as I shall ceaselessly pray,
you survive this terrible war, you will follow your destiny as
an Englishman of high position, and I that which God marks out
for me.

"I ask you to accept again the expression of my imperishable
gratitude. Adieu.

"JEANNE BOSSIERE."

The more often Doggie read this perfectly phrased epistle, the greater
waxed his puzzledom. The gratitude was all there; more than enough. It
was gratitude and nothing else. He had longed for a human story
telling just how the thing had happened, just how Jeanne had felt. He
had wanted her to say: "Get well soon and come back, and I'll tell you
all about it." But instead of that she dwelt on the difference of
their social status, loftily announced that they would never meet
again and that they would follow different destinies, and bade him the
_adieu_ which in French is the final leave-taking. All of which to
Doggie, the unsophisticated, would have seemed ridiculous, had it not
been so tragic. He couldn't reconcile the beautiful letter, written in
faultless handwriting and impeccable French, with the rain-swept girl
on the escarpment. What did she mean? What had come over her?

But the ways of Jeannes are not the ways of Doggies. How was he to
know of the boastings of Phineas McPhail, and the hopelessness with
which they filled Jeanne's heart? How was he to know that she had sat
up most of the night in her little room over the gateway, drafting and
redrafting this precious composition, until, having reduced it to
soul-devastating correctitude, and, with aching eyes and head, made a
fair and faultless copy, she had once more cried herself into
miserable slumber?

At once Doggie called for pad and pencil, and began to write:

"MY DEAR JEANNE,--

"I don't understand. What fly has stung you? (_Quelle mouche
vous a piquee?_) Of course we shall meet again. Do you suppose
I am going to let you go out of my life?"

(He sucked his pencil. Jeanne must be spoken to severely.)

"What rubbish are you talking about my social position? My
father was an English parson (_pasteur anglais_) and yours a
French lawyer. If I have a little money of my own, so have you.