in the
vacuum in his skull--"I shall never see her again. . . . Can such a
thing be possible?"

He drowsed for a few seconds, only to be awakened with the sensation
that some horrible explosion was sending him through the air. And so,
with sweats of anguish, he wakefully passed the hours until in the gloom
of his room the dawn showed a milky rectangle of light, and began to be
reflected on the window curtains.

The velvet-like caress of day finally closed his eyes. Upon awaking he
found that the morning was well advanced, and he hurried to the garden
of the grotto. . . . Oh, the hours of tremulous and unavailing waiting,
believing that he recognized Marguerite in every white-clad lady that
came along, guiding a wounded patient!

By afternoon, after a lunch whose dishes filed past him untouched, he
returned to the garden in search of her. Beholding her in the distance
with the blind man leaning on her arm, a feeling of faintness came over
him. She looked to him taller, thinner, her face sharper, with two dark
hollows in her cheeks and her eyes bright with fever, the lids drawn
with weariness. He suspected that she, too, had passed an anguished
night of tenacious, self-centred thought, of grievous stupefaction like
his own, in the room of her hotel. Suddenly he felt all the weight
of insomnia and listlessness, all the depressing emotion of the cruel
sensations experienced in the last few hours. Oh, how miserable they
both were! . . .

She was walking warily, looking from one side to the other, as though
foreseeing danger. Upon discovering him she clung to her charge, casting
upon her former lover a look of entreaty, of desperation, imploring
pity. . . Ay, that look!

He felt ashamed of himself; his personality appeared to be unrolling
itself before him, and he surveyed himself with the eyes of a judge.
What was this seduced and useless man, called Julio Desnoyers, doing
there, tormenting with his presence a poor woman, trying to turn her
from her righteous repentance, insisting on his selfish and petty
desires when all humanity was thinking of other things? . . . His
cowardice angered him. Like a thief taking advantage of the sleep of his
victim, he was stalking around this brave and true man who could not
see him, who could not defend himself, in order to rob him of the only
affection that he had in the world which had so miraculously returned to
him! Very well, Gentleman Desnoyers! . . . Ah, what a scoundrel he wa