"

Then one morning when he was going out, the concierge called out to him
that there was a letter. Nobody wrote to him but his Aunt Louisa and
sometimes Hayward, and this was a handwriting he did not know. The letter
was as follows:

Please come at once when you get this. I couldn't put up with it any more.
Please come yourself. I can't bear the thought that anyone else should
touch me. I want you to have everything.

F. Price

I have not had anything to eat for three days.

Philip felt on a sudden sick with fear. He hurried to the house in which
she lived. He was astonished that she was in Paris at all. He had not seen
her for months and imagined she had long since returned to England. When
he arrived he asked the concierge whether she was in.

"Yes, I've not seen her go out for two days."

Philip ran upstairs and knocked at the door. There was no reply. He called
her name. The door was locked, and on bending down he found the key was in
the lock.

"Oh, my God, I hope she hasn't done something awful," he cried aloud.

He ran down and told the porter that she was certainly in the room.
He had had a letter from her and feared a terrible accident. He suggested
breaking open the door. The porter, who had been sullen and disinclined to
listen, became alarmed; he could not take the responsibility of breaking
into the room; they must go for the commissaire de police. They walked
together to the bureau, and then they fetched a locksmith. Philip found
that Miss Price had not paid the last quarter's rent: on New Year's Day
she had not given the concierge the present which old-established custom
led him to regard as a right. The four of them went upstairs, and they
knocked again at the door. There was no reply. The locksmith set to work,
and at last they entered the room. Philip gave a cry and instinctively
covered his eyes with his hands. The wretched woman was hanging with a
rope round her neck, which she had tied to a hook in the ceiling fixed by
some previous tenant to hold up the curtains of the bed. She had moved her
own little bed out of the way and had stood on a chair, which had been
kicked away. It was lying on its side on the floor. They cut her down.
The body was quite cold.

XLIX

The story which Philip made out in one way and another was terrible. One
of the grievances of the women-students was that Fanny Price would never
share their gay meals in restaurants, and the reason was obvious: sh