For some time they worked at the pile of correspondence. Karen would open each letter and read the signature; letters from those known to Madame von Marwitz, or from her friends, were handed to her; the letters signed by unknown names Karen read aloud:--begging letters; letters requesting an autograph; letters recommending to the great woman's kindly notice some budding genius, and letters of sheer adulation, listened to, these last, sometimes with a dreamy indifference to the end, interrupted sometimes with a sudden "_Assez_." There were a dozen such letters this morning and when Karen read the signature of the last: "Your two little adorers Gladys and Ethel Bocock," Madame von Marwitz remarked: "We need not have that. Put it into the basket." "But, Tante," Karen protested, looking round at her with a smile, "you must hear it; it is so funny and so nice." "So stupid I call it, my dear. They should not be encouraged." "But you must be kind, you will be kind, even to the stupid. See, here are two of your photographs, they ask you to sign them. There is a stamped and addressed envelope to return them in. Such love, Tante! such torrents of love! You must listen." Madame von Marwitz resigned herself, her eyes fixed absently on the smoke curling from her cigarette as if, in its fluctuating evanescence, she saw a symbol of human folly. Gladys and Ethel lived in Clapham and told her that they came in to all her concerts and sat for hours waiting on the stairs. Their letter ended: "Everyone adores you, but no one can adore you like we do. Oh, would you tell us the colour of your eyes? Gladys thinks deep, dark grey, but I think velvety brown; we talk and talk about it and can't decide. We mustn't take up any more of your precious time.--Your two little adorers, Gladys and Ethel Bocock." "Bocock," Madame von Marwitz commented. "No one can adore me like they do. Let us hope not. _Petites sottes._" "You will sign the photographs, Tante--and you will say, yes, you must--'To my kind little admirers.' Now be merciful." "Bocock," Madame von Marwitz mused, holding out an indulgent hand for the pen that Karen gave her and allowing the blotter with the photographs upon it to be placed upon her knee. "And they care for music, _parbleu_! How many of such appreciators are there, do you think, among my adorers? I do this to please you, Karen. It is against my principles to encourage the _schwärmerei_ of schoolgirls. There," she signed quickly across each picture in a large, graceful and illegible hand, adding, with a smile up at Karen,--"To my kind little admirers." Karen, satisfied, examined the signatures, held them to the fire for a moment to preserve their vivid black in bold relief, and then put them into their envelope, dropping in a small slip of paper upon which she had written: "Her eyes are grey, flecked with black, and are not velvety." They had now reached the end of the letters.