“I have no friend, Réné; will you be one? I am very unhappy.”
“If the paper is a little crumpled,” said I, “it is because a day has never passed without my reading it.”
“Then how is it that I have never seen you since that morning, Réné?”
“For what purpose? Since you wrote to me you cannot have doubted me.”
“You have a good heart, Réné, and I did not wish to see you to get that opinion from you.”
“That is well. If you had had need of me, you had but to write, and I should have been with you in a moment. At first, day after day, I hoped for a letter. Oh, if I had received one!—had it been only the one word ‘Come!’—with what joy would I have flown to your side! But such happiness was not for me. Days, weeks, months passed away, and I remained alone with my sorrow, without ever being called away to offer you a consolation.”
She looked at me with an expression of affectionate tenderness.
“Ah, Réné, I should have liked to have seen you; but not hearing from you, I thought that you had forgotten me.”
“Oh, Mdlle. Sophie!” I cried; “I am not sufficiently happy or unhappy for that.”
“In truth, my dear Réné,” said she, trying to smile, “you have quite the air of a hero of romance.”