“I always returned home laden with gifts, and I was scarcely settled there, when new requests came that I would repeat the visit.  When we were a little older we had lessons together, both from a regular teacher and from my father, and when we began to read together, the heroes and heroines of our books were as real to us as our dolls had been, and we lived over their lives and histories again and again.  What life and energy Lili had; what freshness and vivacity; my charming Lili, with her flowing brown curls and her laughing eyes!

“So the years passed, and no thought of coming sorrow and separation crossed our young lives, until one day, when we were nearly twelve years old, my father told me—­I remember the very spot in the garden where we were standing at that moment—­that Mr. Blank, Lili’s father, was about to give up his factory and return to Germany.  As I understood, Mr. Blank had been deceived from the very beginning; the business was not in the prosperous condition that had been represented to him, and now he was obliged to give it up, to his great loss.  My father was very much disturbed, and he declared that Mr. Blank had been very badly treated, and was consequently ruined.

“I was broken-hearted.  To lose Lili, and to have her lose all her property, were two things which made my life unhappy for a long, long time.  The very next day she came to say good-bye.  We cried bitterly, for we could not bear to think of living apart, we were so necessary to each other’s happiness.  We promised to be always true to each other, and to use every effort to meet again; and then we sat down together and composed a last poem, for we had often written verses together.  We cut the poem in halves, and took each a half to keep as a token of our lasting union, and as a sign of recognition when we should some day meet again.

“Lili went away.  We wrote to each other for several years, and our friendship continued as fervent as ever.  These letters were the only drops of comfort in the monotonous loneliness of my life after I lost Lili.  When I was about seventeen, I received a letter which told me that her father had decided to go to America.  She promised to write again as soon as they were settled in their new life.  I never heard from her again.  Whether her letters were lost, or whether the family never staid long enough in one place for her to be able to give me an address, or whether Lili thought that our lives were now so irrevocably separated that we could never hope to resume our intimacy—­these are questions that I have often asked myself, but that of course I have had no means of deciding.  Perhaps Lili is no longer living; she may have died soon after that very time—­I cannot tell.  I have mourned her as an irreparable loss, for she was my first, my only intimate girl-friend, and nothing can efface from my mind the memory of her friendship, and of the vast goodness and affection which her family showered upon me.  I have inquired for them in every direction, but have never discovered any clue to their existence far or near.”