he red curtains of the high windows displayed her
exquisitely rounded head resting upon a naked arm and her profusion
of beautiful hair straying in disorder over the pillow. Her lips were
parted in a smile.

"Gilberte!"

She slightly moved and stretched her arms, without opening her eyes.

"Yes, yes; good-by. Oh! please--" Then, raising her head and recognizing
Henriette: "What, is it you! How late is it?"

When she learned that it had not yet struck six she seemed disconcerted,
assuming a sportive air to hide her embarrassment, saying it was
unfair to come waking people up at such an hour. Then, to her friend,
questioning her about her husband, she made answer:

"Why, he has not returned; I don't look for him much before nine
o'clock. What makes you so eager to see him at this hour of the
morning?"

Henriette's voice had a trace of sternness in it as she answered, seeing
the other so smiling, so dull of comprehension in her happy waking.

"I tell you there has been fighting all the morning at Bazeilles, and I
am anxious about my husband."

"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Gilberte, "I assure you there is not the
slightest reason for your feeling so. My husband is so prudent that he
would have been home long ago had there been any danger. Until you see
him back here you may rest easy, take my word for it."

Henriette was struck by the justness of the argument; Delaherche, it
was true, was distinctly not a man to expose himself uselessly. She was
reassured, and went and drew the curtains and threw back the blinds; the
tawny light from without, where the sun was beginning to pierce the fog
with his golden javelins, streamed in a bright flood into the apartment.
One of the windows was part way open, and in the soft air of the
spacious bedroom, but now so close and stuffy, the two women could hear
the sound of the guns. Gilberte, half recumbent, her elbow resting on
the pillow, gazed out upon the sky with her lustrous, vacant eyes.

"So, then, they are fighting," she murmured. Her chemise had slipped
downward, exposing a rosy, rounded shoulder, half hidden beneath the
wandering raven tresses, and her person exhaled a subtle, penetrating
odor, the odor of love. "They are fighting, so early in the morning,
_mon Dieu!_ It would be ridiculous if it were not for the horror of it."

But Henriette, in looking about the room, had caught sight of a pair of
gauntlets, the gloves of a man, lying forgotten on a small table, and
sh