CHAPTER XX.
A LOVE-LETTER.
TWO days after Bernardine had left Petershof, the snows began to melt.
Nothing could be drearier than that process: nothing more desolate than the outlook.
The Disagreeable Man sat in his bedroom trying to read Carpenter's Anatomy.

It failed to hold him.

Then he looked out of the window, and listened to the dripping of the icicles.

At last he took a pen, and wrote as follows: "LITTLE COMRADE, LITTLE PLAYMATE." "I could not believe that you were really going.

When you first said that you would soon be leaving, I listened with unconcern, because it did not seem possible that the time could come when we should not be together; that the days would come and go, and that I should not know how you were; whether you were better, and more hopeful about your life and your work, or whether the old misery of indifference and ill-health was still clinging to you; whether your voice was strong as of one who had slept well and felt refreshed, or whether it was weak like that of one who had watched through the long night.
"It did not seem possible that such a time could come.