and I confess to you frankly that I deserve it, for I succeeded in persuading Émilie, my cousin, to visit Egypt during the season's holidays with her husband

instead of going to the Riviera as is her custom. Nothing about her holiday matters to me except being able to accompany her on the voyage, so as to reach you and see you, if only for a single day, before your return to camp.

"Can you imagine how great my anxiety and my torment have been all this time, ever since I learned that you lay ill? I speak to you now of what I suffered because I know that you are cured. I know it thanks to our consul in Cairo, from whom, before our departure, we received word announcing that you would soon be leaving the hospital.

We arrived at Alexandria this morning on the steamer Mariette Pasha, and tomorrow, when you receive this letter, we shall be making ready to take the noon train to Cairo. We shall arrive there about four o'clock, so they tell us, and go straight to the consulate to ask where you are staying. If only we might meet you at the consulate at that hour, so that our happiness would be complete!

But it is happiness enough for me that I shall see you tomorrow in perfect health, and spend with you the last day of the departing year and the first day of the new! Happiness enough that it may be given to me to serve you and pamper you and make you feel something of my love for you! "From afar I touch your wounded arm with longing and eagerness — and until tomorrow! — Mimi."

The church is quiet in the last hours of the night, and the light of the lamps is drowsy, like two eyes worn out with wakefulness. On the altar a candle is melting,

with only a little of it left. A candle the nursing nun placed for the intention of the officer who has gone off to meet his fiancée; and the candle's flame joined with the nun in imploring God to enfold the Captain and his fiancée in His care, and to make their life pleasant and happy.

The nun would not grant the Captain's request when he insisted on summoning her, that he might see her, bid her farewell, and thank her before leaving the hospital. How could she bid him farewell and hear words of thanks from him? How could she dare so much as look at him? No! She is working in the convent, where he cannot reach her...

And here she has spent the whole

night in the church, on her knees, hiding her face with the hand his touch had burned, praying:

"I gave You my life all at once, O my God; my hand is Yours and belongs to no creature. I forsook the ways of the world to walk in Your way, and I left the pleasures and joys of this life to seek the pains and sufferings that bring me near to Your purity. I offered my life as a candle burning at Your feet, as this little candle burns upon the altar — what, then, is this storm that has swept over me? Will You forgive me my weakness, O merciful God? Will You pardon me, because I found in the touch of sinful man a sweetness the like of which I have not found, O Child Jesus, in Your love and Your worship?"