At this point, there was a long silence on her part. Must it be put down to the postal service again? No, we received our other letters from Paris quite regularly. At the end of ten days I wrote her a line, saying that I was anxious. No answer--what could I make of it? I was seized with apprehension. Was she ill perhaps? But I should have been told about it. Had some accident happened to her? That was more likely. If so, what was it? My thoughts wandered, incapable of fixing themselves. Then, one morning, just as I got out of bed, the waiter brought me a card. What power there is in presentiments! As I took it from him I distinctly saw another, the one I had got from Jeannine at F---- the day before we started. I immediately thought--why, I wonder? that was the first, and this--this, the last! It was not the Paris postmark. I undid it slowly, pretending--on whose account?--to be unmoved. One page, no more. It was headed Juan-les-Pins, December 17, 1914. Jeannine expressed her regret at the fact that they had been prevented from making the detour they intended, because the time-tables fitted in so awkwardly. Her grandmother was not very well, as a result of a great deal of worry, and found the journey long enough without adding to it. They had arrived the day before yesterday on the Riviera, which was not justifying its reputation, since the sun was absent. It lacked joyousness above everything. She added that she could not tear her thoughts away from the cold Northern regions, where so much youth, and all the promise of the future was succumbing. She ended by expressing the hope that we should see each other again some day. There was no allusion to our travelling plans, which I had mentioned to her several times. I stood still, thunder-struck. I mechanically began to read over the lines again. The letters were dancing. I searched for an unexpected meaning in them. I refused to admit.... But the conviction was secretly gaining ground in my mind. When I got to the signature again, there was not an unsteady stroke. The evolution was complete; I was ripe at last to understand. It was the emanation of a distant, a prodigiously distant being. How could I ever have thought--? My simplicity amazed me. Here, endless overwhelming forebodings occurred to my mind. The imperceptibly, but totally changed tone of her letters; the note of friendship substituted for that of love; never a word in reference to my misfortune; the grandmother always refraining from adding a personal message, the long-delayed opportunity of seeing me again. Lastly, the brutal decision: these four sentences of dismissal.