now imagined that when a seeing person's
eyes are opened, his own image must stand before him.

Now as she lay in bed, her mother believing her to be asleep, the words
recurred to her again: "It would be disagreeable if we should find our
faces dark!" She had heard of ugliness and beauty; she knew that ugly
people were generally much pitied, and often less loved. "If I should
be ugly," she said to herself, "and he were to care less for me! He
used to play with my hair and call it silk--he will never do that now,
if he finds me ugly. And he?--if _he_ should happen to be ugly, I never
would let him feel it--never! I should love him just the same. Yet, no;
_he_ cannot be ugly--not he. I know he is not." Thus she brooded long,
lost in care and curiosity. The weather was hot and close. From the
garden the nightingale was heard complaining, while fitful gusts of
west wind came rattling at the windowpanes. She was all alone in her
room. Her mother, who till now had slept beside her, had had her bed
removed, to lessen the heat within that narrow space. It was
unnecessary to watch her now, they thought, as all feverish symptoms
were supposed to have disappeared. This night, however, they did return
again, and kept her tossing restlessly until long after midnight. Then
sleep, though steep dull and broken, had taken pity on her, and come to
close her weary eyelids.

Meanwhile the storm that had been encircling the horizon half the day,
threatening and growling, had arisen with might, gathered itself just
above the wood, and paused--even the wind had ceased. Now a heavy crash
of thunder breaks over the young girl's slumbers. She starts up, half
dreaming still--what it is she feels or wants, she hardly knows;
impelled by some vague terror, she rises to her feet. Her pillows seem
to burn her. Standing by her bed, she listens to the pattering rain
without; but it does not cool her fevered brow. She tries to collect
her thoughts--to remember what had passed. She can recall nothing but
those melancholy fancies with which she had fallen asleep. A hasty
resolution forms and ripens in her mind. She will go to Clement; he too
is alone--what is to prevent her resolving all her doubts at once, by
one look at him and at herself? Possessed by this idea, the doctor's
injunctions are all forgotten. Just as she had left her couch, with
groping trembling hands, she finds the door which stands half open;
feeling for the bed, she steals on tiptoe t