What is best in a state of brimful, equable suffering is that it does away with the gnawings of petty sensations.  Too far gone to be sensible to hope and desire I was spared the inferior pangs of elation and impatience.  Hours with her or hours without her were all alike, all in her possession!  But still there are shades and I will admit that the hours of that morning were perhaps a little more difficult to get through than the others.  I had sent word of my arrival of course.  I had written a note.  I had rung the bell.  Therese had appeared herself in her brown garb and as monachal as ever.  I had said to her: 

“Have this sent off at once.”

She had gazed at the addressed envelope, smiled (I was looking up at her from my desk), and at last took it up with an effort of sanctimonious repugnance.  But she remained with it in her hand looking at me as though she were piously gloating over something she could read in my face.

“Oh, that Rita, that Rita,” she murmured.  “And you, too!  Why are you trying, you, too, like the others, to stand between her and the mercy of God?  What’s the good of all this to you?  And you such a nice, dear, young gentleman.  For no earthly good only making all the kind saints in heaven angry, and our mother ashamed in her place amongst the blessed.”

“Mademoiselle Therese,” I said, “vous etes folle.”

I believed she was crazy.  She was cunning, too.  I added an imperious:  “Allez,” and with a strange docility she glided out without another word.  All I had to do then was to get dressed and wait till eleven o’clock.

The hour struck at last.  If I could have plunged into a light wave and been transported instantaneously to Dona Rita’s door it would no doubt have saved me an infinity of pangs too complex for analysis; but as this was impossible I elected to walk from end to end of that long way.  My emotions and sensations were childlike and chaotic inasmuch that they were very intense and primitive, and that I lay very helpless in their unrelaxing grasp.  If one could have kept a record of one’s physical sensations it would have been a fine collection of absurdities and contradictions.  Hardly touching the ground and yet leaden-footed; with a sinking heart and an excited brain; hot and trembling with a secret faintness, and yet as firm as a rock and with a sort of indifference to it all, I did reach the door which was frightfully like any other commonplace door, but at the same time had a fateful character:  a few planks put together—­and an awful symbol; not to be approached without awe—­and yet coming open in the ordinary way to the ring of the bell.

It came open.  Oh, yes, very much as usual.  But in the ordinary course of events the first sight in the hall should have been the back of the ubiquitous, busy, silent maid hurrying off and already distant.  But not at all!  She actually waited for me to enter.  I was extremely taken aback and I believe spoke to her for the first time in my life.