k. Had
I seen you, I should probably have stammered out something feeble and
unsatisfactory--something belying my feelings rather than explaining
them; so it is perhaps as well that I was denied admission to your
presence. You often remarked, monsieur, that my devoirs dwelt a great
deal on fortitude in bearing grief--you said I introduced that theme too
often: I find indeed that it is much easier to write about a severe duty
than to perform it, for I am oppressed when I see and feel to what a
reverse fate has condemned me; you were kind to me, monsieur--very kind;
I am afflicted--I am heart-broken to be quite separated from you; soon
I shall have no friend on earth. But it is useless troubling you with my
distresses. What claim have I on your sympathy? None; I will then say no
more.

"Farewell, Monsieur.

"F. E. HENRI."

I put up the note in my pocket-book. I slipped the five-franc pieces
into my purse--then I took a turn through my narrow chamber.

"Mdlle. Reuter talked about her poverty," said I, "and she is poor;
yet she pays her debts and more. I have not yet given her a quarter's
lessons, and she has sent me a quarter's due. I wonder of what she
deprived herself to scrape together the twenty francs--I wonder what
sort of a place she has to live in, and what sort of a woman her aunt
is, and whether she is likely to get employment to supply the place she
has lost. No doubt she will have to trudge about long enough from school
to school, to inquire here, and apply there--be rejected in this place,
disappointed in that. Many an evening she'll go to her bed tired
and unsuccessful. And the directress would not let her in to bid me
good-bye? I might not have the chance of standing with her for a few
minutes at a window in the schoolroom and exchanging some half-dozen of
sentences--getting to know where she lived--putting matters in train
for having all things arranged to my mind? No address on the note"--I
continued, drawing it again from the pocket-book and examining it on
each side of the two leaves: "women are women, that is certain, and
always do business like women; men mechanically put a date and address
to their communications. And these five-franc pieces?"--(I hauled them
forth from my purse)--"if she had offered me them herself instead of
tying them up with a thread of green silk in a kind of Lilliputian
packet, I could have thrust them back into her little hand, and shut
up the small, taper fingers over t