"ICH WILL ALLES LERNEN, WAS SIE MICH LEHREN:--there _now_, tell me what it means." "Not until you learn it; _encore une fois_." I said it after him again and again, but when I attempted it alone, I made invariably some error. "Let me write it for you," he said, and pulling a book from his pocket, tore out a leaf and wrote the sentence on it. "There--keep the paper and study it, and say it to me in the morning." I have the paper still; long years have passed: it is only a crumpled little yellow fragment; but the world would be poorer and emptier to me if it were destroyed. I had quite mastered the sentence, saying it after him word for word, and held the slip of paper in my hand, when I heard steps in the hall. I knew Richard's step very well, and gave a little start. Mr. Langenau frowned, and his manner changed, as I half rose from my seat, and as quickly sank back in it again. "Is it that you lack courage?" he said, looking at me keenly. "I don't know what I lack," I cried, bending down my head to hide my flushed face; "but I hate to be scolded and have scenes." "But who has a right to scold you and to make a scene?" "Nobody: only everybody does it all the same." "Everybody, I suppose, means Mr. Richard Vandermarck, who is frowning at you this moment from the hall." "And it means you--who are frowning at me this moment from your seat." All this time Richard had been standing in the hall; but now he walked slowly away. I felt sure he had given me up. The people began to come out of the parlor, and I felt ready to cry with vexation, when I thought that they would again be talking about me. It was true, I am afraid, that I lacked courage. "You want me to go away?" he said, fixing his eyes intently on me. "O yes, if you only would," I said naïvely. He looked so white and angry when he rose, that I sprang up and put out my hand to stop him, and said hurriedly, "I only meant--that is--I should think you would understand without my telling you. A woman cannot bear to have people talk about her, and know who she likes and who she doesn't. It kills me to have people talk about me. I'm not used to society--I don't know what is right--but I don't think--I am afraid--I ought not to have stayed in here and talked to you away from all the others. It's that that makes me so uncomfortable. That, and Richard too. For I know he doesn't like to have me pleased with any one. Do not go away angry with me. I don't see why you do not understand." My incoherent little speech had brought him to his senses. "I am not going away angry," he said in a low voice, "I will promise not to speak to you again to-night. Only remember that I have feelings as well as Mr. Richard Vandermarck." In a moment more I was alone. Richard did not come near me, nor seem to notice me, as he passed through the hall. Presently Mr. Eugene Whitney came in, and I was very glad to see him.