"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 them--so--and compelled her shame, her pride, her shyness, all to yield to a little bit of determined Will--now where is she? How can I get at her?"
Opening my chamber door I walked down into the kitchen.
"Who brought the packet?" I asked of the servant who had delivered it to me.
"Un petit commissionaire, monsieur."
"Did he say anything?"
"Rien."
And I wended my way up the back-stairs, wondrously the wiser for my inquiries.
"No matter," said I to myself, as I again closed the door. "No matter--I'll seek her through Brussels."
And I did. I sought her day by day whenever I had a moment's leisure, for four weeks; I sought her on Sundays all day long; I sought her on the Boulevards, in the Allee Verte, in the Park; I sought her in Ste.