"Heavens! If she were to fall ill! There would be time for her to die before he could see her ... Why had she not written to him, just a line or two, the day before?... Was she ill?... Yes. She was surely ill ..." He would choke.--More often still he would be terrified of dying away from her, dying alone, among people who did not care, in the horrible school, in grim, gray Paris. He would make himself ill with the thought of it.... "Should he write and tell her to come back?"--But then he would be ashamed of his cowardice. Besides, as soon as he began to write to her it gave him such joy to be in communion with her that for a moment he would forget his suffering. It seemed to him that he could see her, hear her voice: he would tell her everything: never had he spoken to her so intimately, so passionately, when they had been together: he would call her "my true, brave, dear, kind, beloved, little sister," and say, "I love you so." Indeed they were real love-letters. Their tenderness was sweet and comforting to Antoinette: they were all the air she had to breathe. If they did not come in the morning at the usual time she would be miserable. Once or twice it happened that the Grünebaums, from carelessness, or--who knows?--from a wicked desire to tease, forgot to give them to her until the evening, and once even until the next morning: and she worked herself into a fever.--On New Year's Day they had the same idea, without telling each other: they planned a surprise, and each sent a long telegram--(at vast expense)--and their messages arrived at the same time.--Olivier always consulted Antoinette about his work and his troubles: Antoinette gave him advice, and encouragement, and fortified him with her strength, though indeed she had not really enough for herself. She was stifled in the foreign country, where she knew nobody, and nobody was interested in her, except the wife of a professor, lately come to the town, who also felt out of her element. The good creature was kind and motherly, and sympathetic with the brother and sister who loved each other so and had to live apart--(for she had dragged part of her story out of Antoinette):--but she was so noisy, so commonplace, she was so lacking--though quite innocently--in tact and discretion that aristocratic little Antoinette was irritated and drew back. She had no one in whom she could confide and so all her troubles were pent up, and weighed heavily upon her: sometimes she thought she must give way under them: but she set her teeth and struggled on. Her health suffered: she grew very thin. Her brother's letters became more and more downhearted. In a fit of depression he wrote: "Come back, come back, come back!..."