I had been an inmate of the school in the Rue d'Isabelle a fortnight. In this interval I had lived through a great deal. Thanks to attentive self-doctoring and a strict _régime_, where no luxuries in the way of private crying were allowed, I had pulled myself through the first acute stage of the sort of sickness that attacks every 'new' girl, as the result of being plunged into the cold atmosphere of a strange, and especially of a foreign, school. Now I was out of danger of the peril that had threatened me during about a week, the possible disaster of some sudden access of violent weeping over my sense of desolation, in the sight of these foreign teachers and pupils, that would have seemed to me profoundly humiliating, on patriotic, as well as upon private grounds. For, as the one English girl in this Belgian school, was not the honour of my country, or, at any rate, of the girls of my country, at stake? And then I realised, also, that politeness to the foreigner, as well as duty to myself and my country, forbade any exhibition of vehement home-sickness. Thus, might not these Belgian teachers and girls reasonably take offence, and say, 'Why do you come to school in our country if you don't like it? We didn't ask you to come here. Why don't you go home?' By these methods, then, of what it pleased me to regard as a sort of philosophy of my own, I had lived through the worst, and if I was not entirely cured of occasional inward sinkings of the heart and the feeling of desolation, I felt I had mastered the temptation to make any public display of them. And having reached this point by my own effort, now help came to me in the shape of a friendly tribute and encouragement from a girl who was a sort of philosopher, also by a rule of her own, which she kindly explained to me, and which I entirely approved of. This girl was fair and small, and had broad brows and clear green eyes under them. Her name was Marie Hazard. She had not spoken to me before, but on several occasions had shown me little kindnesses, and given me nice smiles and nods of greeting. Finally she came up to me in the garden and took my arm:-- 'Do you know why I have a friendship for you?' she asked. 'No,' I answered. 'But have you _really_? I _am_ so glad.'