But he should have been cautious how he disposed of the letter--in the fire, for choice. Only, you see, that was not Hugh John's way. He stuck it in his pocket-book, and pulled it out with his handkerchief just in time for Mrs. Nipper Donnan, on her way home with her groceries, to find it. In the little skin-covered book (which had once been "imitation shark"), wrapped in a piece of tissue-paper, was also the half of a crooked sixpence. Next morning but two, in far-away Paris, in front of a tall plastered house with big barren windows, Miss Cecilia Carter, walking to and fro with two of her companions, had an odd-looking, ill-addressed packet put into her hand. She opened it with a little glow of expectation--and there in her hand lay the other half of the crooked sixpence! Cissy Carter did not faint. She did not cry out. There is no record, even, that she went pale. At any rate the school registers bear out the fact that a quarter of an hour after she took her lesson in "theory" from the music-master, Herr Rohrs. She only felt that something had broken within her--something not to be mended or ever set right, something she could not even have the relief of speaking about as the French girls did, rhapsodizing eternally about the officers who rode past the gate, slacking the speed of their horses a little that they might stare up the avenue along which the young girls walked two-and-two, also on the look-out for them. She had told Hugh John often just what had happened. She had cast it in his face, when the pretty spite of her temper got the better of her, that, some day or other, it would come to this. But in her heart of hearts she had never really thought so for a moment. Hugh John untrue! Oh, no! _That_ was impossible! It did not enter into the scheme of things. Yes, certainly, twice, in a fit of "the pet," she had sent hers back to Hugh John. But this was different--oh, so different! How different, only those who knew Hugh John could understand. When _he_ did such a thing, he meant something by it. Hugh John had no silly flashes of temper--like a girl--like her, Cissy Carter. So she thought to herself as she went about her work, the rodent which we children call the "Sorrow Rat" gnawing all day at her heart, the noise of the class-rooms, ordinarily so deafening, dull and distant in her ear. All over! Yes, it was all over. Hugh John had wished it so, and from that, she well knew, there was no appeal! And there was (I know it well) one sad little heart the more in that great city of Paris, where (if one must believe the books) there are too many already.