red
no repetition of, no allusion to, that fiery passage.

That night passed: all nights--even the starless night before
dissolution--must wear away. About six o'clock, the hour which called
up the household, I went out to the court, and washed my face in its
cold, fresh well-water. Entering by the carre, a piece of mirror-glass,
set in an oaken cabinet, repeated my image. It said I was changed: my
cheeks and lips were sodden white, my eyes were glassy, and my eyelids
swollen and purple.

On rejoining my companions, I knew they all looked at me--my heart
seemed discovered to them: I believed myself self-betrayed. Hideously
certain did it seem that the very youngest of the school must guess why
and for whom I despaired.

"Isabelle," the child whom I had once nursed in sickness, approached
me. Would she, too, mock me!

"Que vous etes pale! Vous etes donc bien malade, Mademoiselle!" said
she, putting her finger in her mouth, and staring with a wistful
stupidity which at the moment seemed to me more beautiful than the
keenest intelligence.

Isabelle did not long stand alone in the recommendation of ignorance:
before the day was over, I gathered cause of gratitude towards the
whole blind household. The multitude have something else to do than to
read hearts and interpret dark sayings. Who wills, may keep his own
counsel--be his own secret's sovereign. In the course of that day,
proof met me on proof, not only that the cause of my present sorrow was
unguessed, but that my whole inner life for the last six months, was
still mine only. It was not known--it had not been noted--that I held
in peculiar value one life among all lives. Gossip had passed me by;
curiosity had looked me over; both subtle influences, hovering always
round, had never become centred upon me. A given organization may live
in a full fever-hospital, and escape typhus. M. Emanuel had come and
gone: I had been taught and sought; in season and out of season he had
called me, and I had obeyed him: "M. Paul wants Miss Lucy"--"Miss Lucy
is with M. Paul"--such had been the perpetual bulletin; and nobody
commented, far less condemned. Nobody hinted, nobody jested. Madame
Beck read the riddle: none else resolved it. What I now suffered was
called illness--a headache: I accepted the baptism.

But what bodily illness was ever like this pain? This certainty that he
was gone without a farewell--this cruel conviction that fate and
pursuing furies--a woman's envy a