h she saw any point in my observation (I
daresay there was none), and walked on a few yards, smiling still. Then
she said:

"Father will be pleased."

"I hope everybody will be pleased. When you go to Forstadt the whole
town will run mad over you."

"What will they do?"

"Oh, what won't they do? Crowds, cheers, flowers, fireworks, all the
rest of it. And your picture everywhere!"

She drew in her breath in a long sigh. I looked at her and she blushed.

"You'll like that?" I asked with a laugh.

She did not speak, but nodded her head twice. Her eyes laughed in
triumph. She seemed happy now. My pestilent perversity gave me a shock
of pain for her.

When we came near the house she asked me to let her go alone and tell
her mother. I had no objection to offer. Indeed I was glad to escape a
hand-in-hand appearance, rather recalling the footlights. She started
off, and I fell into a slower walk. She almost ran with a rare buoyancy
of movement. Once she turned her head and waved her hand to me merrily.
I waited a little while at the end of the terrace, and then effected an
entry into my room unperceived. The women would lose no time in telling
one another; then there would be a bustle. I had now a quiet half-hour.
By a movement that seemed inevitable I sat down at my writing-table and
took up a pen. For several minutes I sat twirling the quill between my
fingers. Then I began to write:

"MY DEAR VARVILLIERS: The impossible has happened, and was all
through full of its own impossibility. I have done it. That now
seems a little thing. The marvel remains. 'An absolute absorption
in the tragic aspect'--you remember, I daresay, my phrase; that
was to have been her mood--seen through my coloured glasses. My
glasses! Am I not too blind for any glasses? She has just left me
and run to her mother. She went as though she would dance. She is
merry and triumphant. I am employed in marvelling. She wants to
be a queen; processions and ovations fill her eyes. She is happy.
I would be happy for her sake, but I am oppressed by an
anticipation. You will guess it. It is unavoidable that some day
she will remember myself. We may postpone, but we can not
prevent, this catastrophe. What I am in myself, and what I mean
to her, are things which she will some day awake to. I have to
wait for the time. Yet that she is happy now is something, and I
do not think th