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me oddly, half smiling, half sad. I got up with a vague feeling of shyness; then he called me: "Come and sit beside me,” said he; and, though it was already late, he began speaking to me about my mother, which he had never done since their separation. He told me how he had married her, how much he had loved her and how much she had at first been to him.

Papa," I said to him at last, "do, please, say why are you telling me this this evening - what makes you tell me this just this particular evening?"

“Because, just now, when I came into the drawing-room and saw you lying on the sofa, I thought for a moment it was your mother.” The reason I asked this so insistently was be cause that very evening, Jerome was reading over my shoulder, standing leaning over me. I could not see him, but I felt his breath and, as it were, the warmth and pulsation of his body. I pretended to go on reading, but my mind had stopped working; I could not even distinguish the lines; a perturbation so strange took possession of me that I was obliged to get up from my chair quickly, whilst I still could; I managed to leave the room for a few minutes, luckily without his noticing anything. But a little later, when I was