She seated herself, with the air of an empress, on a shabby little sofa in the corner of the room, and beckoning me to take my place by her side, laid her cool firm hand persuasively on mine.

Her touch filled me with a strange sense of disturbance, half pleasurable, half painful--I don't know how to describe it.

Let me only record that I yielded, and that Minna left us together.
"I want to tell you the whole truth," said Madame Fontaine, as soon as we were alone; "and I can only do so in the absence of my daughter.

You must have seen for yourself that we are very poor ?" Her hand pressed mine gently.

I answered as delicately as I could--I said I was sorry, but not surprised, to hear it.
"When you kindly helped Minna to get that letter yesterday," she went on, "you were the innocent means of inflicting a disappointment on me--one disappointment more, after others that had gone before it.