As she entered her office, a pretty young girl, richly dressed, with a sweet, child's face, flushed with emotion, sprang up, grasped her arm and said, in a trembling voice of nervous determination: "Madame, you do not know me, but I have come to you at a critical moment in my life. I have decided that I will either go into a convent, or marry a blind man. I have plenty of money, I can support a blind man." At the expression which came into the face of the Directrice, her voice rose hysterically. "Don't laugh at me! Don't try to dissuade me. I detest the life at home. My family do not understand me. I have run away from home this morning to tell you this. My decision is irrevocable." The Directrice, feeling herself a thousand years old in worldly wisdom, summoned all her patience and sat down to tell her what she had told all the other pretty, child-faced young ladies who had come with such fixed determination. She said clearly and firmly that it was not to be thought of; that her visitor was far too young to make any such decision; that it would be unfair to any blind man to put him in a position where he would certainly soon feel himself a terrible drag on a young life; that she would not go into a convent, either, but would stay at home with her parents, like a sensible girl, until she married a man like herself. These were the words she pronounced, very simple, common-sense, conversational words, which would have had no effect in any one's else mouth. But what she was spoke more loudly than what she said. The Directrice did not wear the black and penitential garb of a Mother Superior, but she had acquired, through intensive experience, all of a Mother Superior's firm, penetrating authority and calm manner. Not a trace of the amused scorn she felt for the silly child penetrated to the surface of her quiet manner. In ten minutes, the girl was crying, quite relieved that her visit had come to nothing, and the Directrice was calling for a cab to take her home. She herself put the weeping child into the carriage, and stood looking after it with a tolerant smile on her firm lips. "Was I ever as young as that?" she asked herself as she went back to her office. As she turned again to the letter from the important members of the American colony who wanted to be put on the Governing Committee of the institution because of the other distinguished names there, her blind man, the one who had had the horrors, appeared at the door, dressed, still animated with the new energy given him by his Directrice, and held out his hand to her. She jumped up laughing--how could she manage that laugh!--and told him he looked as though he were leading her out to dance. By this device she managed so that, while in reality leading him, he seemed to be leading her down the steps and across the courtyard, to the gymnasium.