The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (4.1895)

By Henry Harland

25

VI

It was characteristic of her that, during her absence, she hardly
wrote to us. She is of far too hasty and impetuous a nature to
take kindly to the task of letter-writing ; her moods are too incon-
stant ; her thoughts, her fancies, supersede one another too'
rapidly. Anyhow, beyond the telegram we had made her promise
to send, announcing her safe arrival, the most favoured of us got
nothing more than an occasional scrappy note, if he got so much ^
while the greater number of the long epistles some of us feit in
duty bound to address to her, elicited not even the semblance of an
acknowledgment. Hence, about the particulars of her experience
we were quite in the dark, though of its general features we were
informed, succinctly, in a big, dashing, uncompromising hand,
that she “ hated ” them.

VII

I am not sure whether it was late in April or early in May that
Nina left us. But one day towards the middle of October, coming
home from the restaurant where I had lunched, I found in my
letter-box in the concierge’s room two half-sheets of paper, folded,
with the corners turned down, and my name superscribed in pencil.
The handwriting startled me a little—and yet, no, it was im-
possible. Then I hastened to unfold and read, and of course it
was the impossible which had happened.

“ Mon eher, I am sorry not to find you at home, but I’ll wait at
the cafe at the corner tili half-past twelve. It is now midi juste.”

That