beg you; you know why I am going.'

The 'dear heart' thrilled him through and through.

'You will write?' he asked.

'I will write to-night,' she said, 'but you must leave me now.'

He fell from the carriage side, and the vehicle went on its leisurely
course, leaving him standing in the snow and staring after it; but
recollecting himself in a moment, he turned and plodded slowly back to
the hotel, with as unconcerned and commonplace a look as he could summon
at short notice.

Annette had one of her old spells of secrecy, and was hidden all
day long. He was glad to miss her and to be left alone with his own
thoughts. He could not realize himself and he could not realize the
Baroness; her promised letter would, however, tell him something. It
might enable him at once to find his orient.

He passed through a strange day--a day of resentment and of tenderness,
a day of despair and of hope. He could not work or plan, and reading was
impossible, and to-morrow morning looked absurdly distant Yet it came at
last, after an almost sleepless night, in the course of which he heard
Annette moving and the occasional clink of glass. He could see a light
gleaming underneath her door half a dozen times, and these reminders
of her came to him always with a dull ache of wretchedness, yet he fell
asleep at last and overslept himself, so that he escaped the final hours
of waiting. The promised letter was to hand, and he tore its envelope
open with trembling fingers, not knowing what to expect within.

'My very dear Friend' (it began),

'All day I have thought of you; I do not know what feeling has been
strongest in my mind. I make no secret of the esteem I have for you,
or of the sorrow I have felt at being forced to end the pleasantest
friendship I have ever known. I should not say to end it, for such a
companionship of spirit as we have experienced can never be ended, but
we must close the first chapter of the book, and the rest will not make
such happy reading. I have felt my heart ache more than once in the
contemplation of your unhappiness, for though you have never spoken of
it, I knew without the episode of last night--I have known almost from
the first--how profoundly you have suffered and will continue to suffer.
Ah, my dear friend, it is only those who have suffered in that way who
can truly sympathize with you. To have found a completer isolation in
the search for companionship--that is the tragedy of many souls. It is