fear she would go away.  She’d be in the corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her father came, she’d jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened quietly—­you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp, ’Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What funny things you say when you’re delirious!  Father says you’ve been in heaps of battles!"’

He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  “I remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did; I’ve had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her.  Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.  ‘My dear fellow,’ he answered, ’I’ve sent Eilie away to her old nurse’s inn down on the river; she’s better there at this time of year.’  We looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he didn’t trust me.  I was hurt by this.  Illness spoils one.  He was right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.  I made up my mind at once to leave him.  But I was too weak—­he had to put me to bed again.  The very next morning he came and proposed that I should go into partnership with him.  He kept a fencing-school and pistol-gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was—­who knows?” He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly:  “There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on each side of the grate.  The room was on the second floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie’s—­half-broken cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid:  ’Missel-thrush from Lucy’s tree—­second family, only one blown.’” He smoked fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.