ased to creak, and I heard quite close to me, on the other
side of the wall, which was nothing but a thin partition, an armchair
being rolled across the carpet, and then a little cough, which seemed to
me to vibrate with emotion. It was he! But for the partition I could have
touched him with my finger. A few moments later I could distinguish the
almost imperceptible sound of footsteps on the carpet; this faint sound
rang violently in my head. All at once my breathing and my heart both
stopped together; there was a tap at the door. The tapping was discreet,
full of entreaty and delicacy. I wanted to reply, "Come in," but I had no
longer any voice; and, besides, was it becoming to answer like that, so
curtly and plainly? I thought "Come in" would sound horribly unseemly,
and I said nothing. There was another tap. I should really have preferred
the door to have been broken open with a hatchet or for him to have come
down the chimney. In my agony I coughed faintly among my sheets. That was
enough; the door opened, and I divined from the alteration in the light
shed by the candles that some one at whom I did not dare look was
interposing between them and myself.

This some one, who seemed to glide across the carpet, drew near the bed,
and I could distinguish out of the corner of my eye his shadow on the
wall. I could scarcely restrain my joy; my Captain wore neither cotton
nightcap nor bandanna handkerchief. That was indeed something. However,
in this shadow which represented him in profile, his nose had so much
importance that amid all my uneasiness a smile flitted across my lips. Is
it not strange how all these little details recur to your mind? I did not
dare turn round, but I devoured with my eyes this shadow representing my
husband; I tried to trace in it the slightest of his gestures; I even
sought the varying expressions of his physiognomy, but, alas! in vain.

I do not know how to express in words all that I felt at that moment; my
pen seems too clumsy to write my sensations, and, besides, did I really
see deep into my heart?

Do men comprehend all this? Do they understand that the heart requires
gradual changes, and that if a half-light awakens, a noon-day blaze
dazzles and burns? It is not that the poor child, who is trembling in a
corner, refuses to learn; far from that, she has aptitude, good-will, and
a quick and ready intelligence; she knows she has reached the age at
which it is necessary to know how to read;