Nothing could be more judicious than what you have written me, my dear friend.  It was certainly to have been expected that my “bore” would have approached me on the occasion of our next meeting.  His heroism gave him the right to do so, and politeness made it a duty.  Under pain of being thought unmannerly he was bound to make inquiries as to the results of the accident on my health and that of Nais.  But if, contrary to all these expectations, he did not descend from his cloud, my resolution, under your judicious advice, was taken.  If the mountain did not come to me, I should go to the mountain; like Hippolyte in the tale of Theramene, I would rush upon the monster and discharge my gratitude upon him at short range.  I have come to think with you that the really dangerous side of this foolish obsession on his part is its duration and the inevitable gossip in which, sooner or later, it would involve me.

Therefore, I not only accepted the necessity of speaking to my shadow first, but under pretence that my husband wished to call upon him and thank him in person, I determined to ask him his name and address, and if I found him a suitable person I intended to ask him to dinner on the following day; believing that if he had but a shadow of common-sense, he would, when he saw the manner in which I live with my husband, my frantic passion, as you call it, for my children, in short, the whole atmosphere of my well-ordered home, he would, as I say, certainly see the folly of persisting in his present course.  At any rate half the danger of his pursuit was over if it were carried on openly.  If I was still to be persecuted, it would be in my own home, where we are all, more or less, exposed to such annoyances, which an honest woman possessing some resources of mind can always escape with honor.

Well, all these fine schemes and all your excellent advice have come to nothing.  Since the accident, or rather since the day when my physician first allowed me to go out, nothing, absolutely nothing have I seen of my unknown lover.  But, strange to say, although his presence was intolerably annoying, I am conscious that he still exercises a sort of magnetism over me.  Without seeing him, I feel him near me; his eyes weigh upon me, though I do not meet them.  He is ugly, but his ugliness has something energetic and powerfully marked, which makes one remember him as a man of strong and energetic faculties.  In fact, it is impossible not to think about him; and now that he appears to have relieved me of his presence, I an conscious of a void—­that sort of void the ear feels when a sharp and piercing noise which has long annoyed it ceases.  What I am going to add may seem to you great foolishness; but are we always mistress of such mirages of the imagination?