a gentleman! But I found myself
laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word." He spoke faster, as if
pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night. "I could
not sleep that night. To lie near her with those thoughts in my brain
was impossible! I made an excuse, and sat up with some papers. The
hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be able to do nothing
to prevent it. What could I do? Have you noticed how people may become
utter strangers without a word? It only needs a thought.... The very
next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.' 'Alone?' 'Yes.' I had made
up my mind by then that she must do just as she wished. Perhaps I acted
wrongly; I do not know what one ought to do in such a case; but before
she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what is it?' 'I don't know,' she
answered; and I kissed her--that was all.... A month passed; I wrote to
her nearly every day, and I had short letters from her, telling me very
little of herself. Dalton was a torture to me, for I could not tell him;
he had a conviction that she was going to become a mother. 'Ah, Brune!'
he said, 'my poor wife was just like that.' Life, sir, is a somewhat
ironical affair...! He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the
school two or three times a week. I used to think I saw a change, a
purpose growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in
him as if he chafed against my blade. I had a kind of joy in feeling I
had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute
like a straw. I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it. Jealousy is a low
thing, sir--a low, base thing! When he asked me where my wife was, I
told him; I was too proud to hide it. Soon after that he came no more to
the school.

"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
coming down. I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to meet me
in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent. I asked her to
be there at four o'clock. It has always been my belief that a man must
neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything from her. Women
are generous--they will give you what they can. I sealed my letter, and
posted it myself. All the way down I kept on saying to myself, 'She must
come--surely she will come!'"

VII

"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
ague. I reached the orchard before my time. She was not there. You know
what it is like to wait? I stood still and