Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/117

Rh Four days later—I had meantime confided the story to no one—four days later Wladislaw approached me mysteriously from behind as I was returning one morning from a visit to the Rue de la Gaiete, with a bunch of onions, half a loaf of black bread, and two turkey-thighs in a string bag.

I knew from the set of his cap that something unusual had happened ; and besides, it was the hour at which he should have been scraping at his fusain in the men s studio. He put a letter in my hand.

"You will say nothing to anybody? I want you to translate it. I can t understand it all. But you will tell no one?"

I responded with an eager denial and the question as to who there could be for me to tell.

He seemed to overlook the half-hundred of students we both knew, as readily as I did; and we opened the letter.

This was it :