He snapped off the electric light and in the darkness found his bed, throwing himself down with an exaggerated noise, in order that nobody might doubt that he had retired for the night.  The darkness reanimated his hope.

“She’s going to come....  She will come at any moment.”

Again he arose cautiously, noiselessly, going on tiptoe.  He must overcome any possible difficulty at the entrance.  He put the door slightly ajar so as to avoid the swinging noise of the door-fastening.  A chair in the frame of the doorway easily held it unlatched.

He got up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary.  He did not wish to sleep.  No, he ought not to drowse....  And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes of sleep.

Suddenly he awoke as if some one had hit his head with a club.  His ears were buzzing....  It was the rude impression of one who sleeps without wishing to and feels himself shaken by reviving restlessness.  Some moments passed without his taking in the situation.  Then he suddenly recalled it all....  Alone!  She had not come!...  He did not know whether minutes or hours had passed by.

Something besides his uneasiness had brought him back to life.  He suspected that in the dark silence some real thing was approaching.  A little mouse appeared to be moving down the corridor.  The shoes placed outside one of the doors were moved with a slight creaking.  Ferragut had the vague impression of air that is displaced by the slow advance of a body.

The door trembled.  The chair was pushed back, little by little, very gently pushed.  In the darkness he descried a moving shadow, dark and dense.  He made a movement.

“Shhhh-h!” sighed a ghostly voice, a voice from the other world.  “It is I.”

Instinctively he raised his right hand to the wall and turned on the light.

Under the electric light it was she,—­a different Freya from any that he had ever seen, with her wealth of hair falling in golden serpents over her shoulders covered with an Asiatic tunic that enveloped her like a cloud.

It was not the Japanese kimono, vulgarized by commerce.  It was made in one piece of Hindustanic cloth, embroidered with fantastic flowers and capriciously draped.  Through its fine texture could be perceived the flesh as though it were a wrapping of multicolored air.

She uttered a protest.  Then, imitating Ulysses’ gesture, she reached her hand toward the wall ... and all was darkness.

* * * * *

Upon awakening, he felt the sunlight on his face.  The window, whose curtains he had forgotten to draw, was blue,—­blue sky above and the blue of the sea in its lower panes.

He looked around him....  Nobody!  For a moment he believed he must have been dreaming, but the sweet perfume of her hair still scented the pillow.  The reality of awakening was as joyous for Ulysses, as sweet as had been the night hours in the mystery of the darkness.  He had never felt so strong and so happy.