“Oubliez les Professeurs.” So said Madame Beck. Madame Beck was a wise woman, but she should not have uttered those words. To do so was a mistake. That night she should have left me calm — not excited, indifferent, not interested, isolated² in my own estimation and that of others — not connected, even in idea, with this second person whom I was to forget.

Forget him? Ah! they took a sage³ plan to make me forget him — the wiseheads! They showed me how good he was; they made of my dear little man a stainless⁴ little hero. And then they had prated⁵ about his manner of loving. What means had I, before this day, of being certain whether he could love at all or not?

I had known him jealous, suspicious; I had seen about him certain tendernesses, fitfulnesses — a softness which came like a warm air, and a ruth which passed like early dew, dried in the heat of his irritabilities: this was all I had seen. And they, Père Silas and Modeste Maria Beck (that these two wrought⁶ in concert I could not doubt) opened up the adytum of his heart — showed me one grand love, the child of this southern nature’s youth, born so strong and perfect, that it had laughed at Death himself, despised his mean rape⁷ of matter, clung to immortal⁸ spirit, and in victory and faith, had watched beside a tomb twenty years.

This had been done — not idly: this was not a mere⁹ hollow indulgence of sentiment; he had proven his fidelity¹⁰ by the consecration¹¹ of his best energies to an unselfish purpose, and

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