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 stay very long, but I am expecting a man with whom I must have a business talk.' Now knowing how much it meant, I fear I was rather unreasonable. It had never happened before that he asked me to leave; I thought it horrid of him, and felt vague fears creeping over me.

I had not recovered when I came to-day and grew still more unhappy, when I found that he was still in the same bad humour.

We had an extremely agreeable half hour, in which the storm gathered about us, his face grew more and more stiff, and I more and more ready for tears.

At last the storm burst, when after a lengthy pause he said in his coldest voice: 'I must say, this promises to be very jolly.'

The same moment he had said it, I burst into sobs, and he was by my side, begging my forgiveness in the most tender words. 'Yes, but why are you so horrid to me, what have I done to you? Are you tired of me?'

'No, Julie, indeed I am not tired of you, but I am so worried.'

'And you won't tell me the reason? Why mayn't I know what worries you, since I am not the cause.'

Then he told me everything. Before he left town, he had to pay a large sum of money, which he owed, and he did not know how to get it. When in an astonished voice I said, that I thought he was rich, he answered that everybody thought so,