Thus an hour passed away.  Weary, at length, and fancying that bed and sleep were one, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing, making darkness the concession of closing his eyes.  But the storm of emotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant.  Sleeplessness is a cruelty which night inflicts on man.  Gwynplaine suffered greatly.  For the first time in his life, he was not pleased with himself.  Ache of heart mingled with gratified vanity.  What was he to do?  Day broke at last; he heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids.  No truce for him, however.  The letter was ever in his mind.  Every word of it came back to him in a kind of chaos.  In certain violent storms within the soul thought becomes a liquid.  It is convulsed, it heaves, and something rises from it, like the dull roaring of the waves.  Flood and flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before the rock; hail and rain clouds with the light shining through their breaks; the petty flights of useless foam; wild swell broken in an instant; great efforts lost; wreck appearing all around; darkness and universal dispersion—­as these things are of the sea, so are they of man.  Gwynplaine was a prey to such a storm.

At the acme of his agony, his eyes still closed, he heard an exquisite voice saying, “Are you asleep, Gwynplaine?” He opened his eyes with a start, and sat up.  Dea was standing in the half-open doorway.  Her ineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips.  She was standing there, charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance.  Then came, as it were, a sacred moment.  Gwynplaine watched her, startled, dazzled, awakened.  Awakened from what?—­from sleep? no, from sleeplessness.  It was she, it was Dea; and suddenly he felt in the depths of his being the indescribable wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good over evil; the miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the blind girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence, dissipated all the darkness within him; the curtain of cloud was dispersed from the soul as if drawn by an invisible hand, and a sky of azure, as though by celestial enchantment, again spread over Gwynplaine’s conscience.  In a moment he became by the virtue of that angel, the great and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man.  Such mysterious confrontations occur to the soul as they do to creation.  Both were silent—­she, who was the light; he, who was the abyss; she, who was divine; he, who was appeased; and over Gwynplaine’s stormy heart Dea shone with the indescribable effect of a star shining on the sea.

CHAPTER II.

FROM GAY TO GRAVE.

How simple is a miracle!  It was breakfast hour in the Green Box, and Dea had merely come to see why Gwynplaine had not joined their little breakfast table.

“It is you!” exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said everything.  There was no other horizon, no vision for him now but the heavens where Dea was.  His mind was appeased—­appeased in such a manner as he alone can understand who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when the hurricane had passed away.  Over nothing does the calm come so quickly as over the whirlpool.  This results from its power of absorption.  And so it is with the human heart.  Not always, however.