I can recall very clearly her constant difficulties with our landlady and the servants, which finally culminated in a request that we should seek lodgings elsewhere. Do you recollect Madame Vanott’s clasping us both in her arms and filling our hands with bonbons, when the time of parting came? I do not know where we removed to, my sole remembrance of the next few weeks being of my mother’s complaints of lodgings, food, servants, and French life generally. We moved three times within a month, fairly expelled by our landlords because they could not live at peace with “la Madame.” Our last exodus began in an angry scene between her and the housewife, in which a gendarme played a part, and from which you and I fled. The next morning we learned that my mother had determined to return to America, and leave us to live our own life. Three days later we said emotionless good-bys, my father going as far as Havre with her. Her departure set us asking questions, and my father’s replies explained many things which, in our childish talks, we had gravely discussed. He told us how his own wealth had been lost in Wall Street, barely enough being left for a competence even in Europe. Of my mother’s leaving us he spoke sadly. “She never pretended to care for me,” he said, “but I loved her and was willing to marry her. The wrong was mine, and we should not blame her if, when I can no longer give what was her price, she does not choose to continue the one-sided bargain.” At the time her absence seemed to you and me only a relief, but now, as I look back, I know that my father never ceased to love her,—all the more, perhaps, because his love had never been requited,—and that separation must have been the final wrecking of his life. Yet from the day she left us I never heard him speak an angry word, and sorrow that would have crushed most men seemed to make him the gentler and sweeter. I wish—Ah! the clock is striking three, and if I am to bring working power to working hours I must stop writing. Good-night, dear one. III