"What's the matter?" I asked her, and after some hesitation she told me that her sweetheart was lying on the point of death in a hospital for consumption. Then she pulled a letter from behind her pillow and handed it over to me. I lit the candle and by its flickering light I read the lines. Brave yet desperate words of a dying man, together with a poem, which throbbed with the unspeakable longing for health and life, and disclosed the most sweet and most lovable thoughts. "I am sure," I said, trying hard to conceal my emotion--"I am sure he will get well again." "No; he is there where only the dying are." Her eyes were dry when she said that, and only her lips trembled. I put out the light and shuddered. From that evening onward I helped her as much as I could with her work, although I had plenty to do myself. One night she roused us from our sleep with a terrible scream, and looking round her wildly, she said she was sure that "he" had called for her. On the morning she asked for half a day off, but she returned no more. After I had been at my post for about six months, I went one day to the post-office to have a letter registered. The letter was addressed to my friend in Buda-Pesth and contained the money which I owed to him. But it contained something else beside that--the outcry of a heart tortured to death. For the first time I told him of my unbearable position. He wrote back at once. His letter was full of kind reproaches for my silence about so many facts--what he termed my insincerity. He further urged me to leave my place at once, take no situation whatsoever, and give myself up entirely to the study of the English language in order to be able to go in for an examination afterwards. He also returned the money which I had sent, begging me to use it for board and so on. Further sums would follow. It happened that it was my day out when I received the letter, and I went to see my friend in the home. I showed her the letter from Buda-Pesth, and she greatly urged me to accede to his wishes. "I know what men are like," she said, "and I feel convinced that that man means to deal honestly with you." In this way she spoke to me for a long while, and being afraid to take a new situation on account of the cooks, I at last consented. My friend then told me that she had thought of leaving the home, and suggested that we should take one room together. "It would be cheapest," she argued. I liked the idea because, as she said, "it was cheapest," and thus it happened that I packed up my things once more and moved into a boarding-house in London, my heart filled with joyous hopes.