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STRAIT IS THE GATE 190

But to have kept her, to have forced the door, to have entered by any means whatever into the house, which yet would not have been shut against me - no, even to-day, when I look back to the past and live it over again — no, it was not possible to me and whoever does not understand me here, has understood nothing of me up till now.


Intolerable anxiety made me write to Juliette a few days later. I told her of my visit to Fongueusemare, and said how much Alissa's paleness and thinness had alarmed me; I implored her to see what could be done and to give me news which I could no longer expect to get from Alissa herself. Less than a month later, I received the following letter: “My dear Jerome, “This is to give you very sad news: our poor Alissa is no more. Alas! the fears you expressed in your letter were only too well founded. For the last few months, without being ill exactly, she seemed to be wasting away; she yielded, however, to my entreaties and consented to see Dr. A-, who wrote to me that there was nothing serious the matter with her. But three days after the visit you paid her, she suddenly left Fongueusemare. It was from a letter of Robert's that I learnt she

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