She blushed as she said it. I glanced at the table and saw several sheets of paper covered with large letters--a name written again and again--and that name, mine! Poor Nicette! I looked at her; she blushed even more, and stammered, lowering her eyes: "I beg your pardon, monsieur, for taking your name for a copy; but I thought that my benefactor's name ought to be the first thing that I wrote." I took her hands and pressed them. "Really, Nicette, I do not deserve so much friendship--if you knew me better!" "Oh! I know you well enough by all that you have done for me." "Are you happy now?" "Yes, monsieur; I can't be more so." The tone in which she said that, and the melancholy expression of her face, gave me much food for thought. "You seem to me much changed, Nicette." "How, monsieur?" "You are pale, and a little thinner than you were." "But I am not sick." "Perhaps this smell of flowers----" "Oh! I've been used to that a long time." "I miss in your manner that light-heartedness and vivacity that I noticed at the time of our first meeting." "Oh! a person can't be always the same." "Still, if you have nothing to distress you----" "No, monsieur, no, I haven't anything." "Your eyes tell me the contrary. Dear Nicette, you have been crying." "No, monsieur; and even if I had--why, sometimes one cries without knowing why, and without being unhappy." We said nothing more. I did not choose to question her further, for I thought that I could guess what caused her distress. She did not look at me again; doubtless she was afraid that I would read her eyes. She was pensive and silent. Nor could I find anything to say. Her sadness had infected my heart. But the silence had a charm which we both enjoyed. However, I thought that I ought to try to divert her thoughts, and at the same time turn my own mind from reflections that were too hazardous. I went to the table and looked at the paper and the writing. "You write well already, Nicette." "Not any too well yet, monsieur; but I hope, with time----" "Do you still take lessons?" "No, I haven't any teacher now; he said things to me that I didn't like; he didn't want to give me the word I wanted for a copy; he always made me write: _Commencement, commonly, exactly_; and I didn't see why I couldn't learn just as well by writing _Dorsan_ as _commonly_, although it isn't so long. That made him angry, so I sent him away; I can get along without him. I know how to write the small letters too." "Let me see." "Oh! my hand would tremble before you, monsieur." "Why so? I will give you a lesson." "Will you, really?" "Why, yes; to be sure."