"It's a letter of farewell." "The one I wrote to you before leaving ?" "Have you ever written me any other, sir ?" "And what did I say to you then ?" "Many fibs, excuses of a delinquent debtor," she answered smilingly, thus giving him to understand how sweet to her those fibs were.

"Be quiet now and I'll read it to you.

I'll leave out your fine phrases in order not to make a martyr of you." Raising the paper to the height of her eyes so that the youth might not see her face, she began: "'_My_'-- but I'll not read what follows that because it's not true." Her eyes ran along some lines.
"'My father wishes me to go away, in spite of all my pleadings.

'You are a man now,' he told me, 'and you must think about your future and about your duties.

You must learn the science of life, a thing which your fatherland cannot teach you, so that you may some day be useful to it.