I feel as though some one were dying near me—­here in the room.

Joergen, is it you?  Answer me, is it you?

Ah!  I must have gone mad....  I am not superstitious, only depressed.

All the doors are locked and the shutters barred.  There is not a sound. 
I cannot hear anything moving outside.

It is just this dead silence that frightens us....  Yes, that is what it is....

* * * * *

Now Jeanne is asleep.  I can hardly see her through the fog.

She sits there like a shadow, an apparition, and the fog floats over her red hair like smoke over a fire.

I know nothing whatever about her.  She is as reserved about her own concerns as I am about mine.  Yet I feel as though during this hour of intense fear and agitation I had seen into the depths of her soul.  I understand her, because we are both women.  She suffers from the eternal unrest of the blood.

She has had a shock to her inmost feelings.  At some time or other she has been so deeply wounded that she cannot live again in peace.

She and I have so much in common that we might be blood-relations.  But we ought not to live under the same roof as mistress and servant.

* * * * *

Gradually the fog is dispersing, and the lights burn brighter.  I seem to follow Jeanne’s dreams as they pass beneath her brow.  Her mouth has fallen a little open, as if she were dead.  Every moment she starts up; but when she sees me she smiles and drops off again.  Good heavens, how utterly exhausted she seems after these hours of fear!

But somebody is there!  Yes ... outside ... there between the trees ...  I see somebody coming....

It is only Torp, with her lantern, and the dressmaker from the neighbouring village.  The moment she opened the basement door and I heard her voice I felt quite myself again.

* * * * *

We have eaten ravenously, like wolves.  For the first time Jeanne sat at table with me and shared my meal.  For the first and probably for the last time.  Torp opened her eyes very wide, but she was careful to make no observations.

My fit of madness to-night has taught me that the sooner I have a man of some kind to protect the house the better.

* * * * *

Jeanne has confided in me.  She was too upset to sleep, and came knocking at my bedroom door, asking if she might come in.  I gave her permission, although I was already in bed.  She sat at the foot of my bed and told me her story.  It is so remarkable that I must set in down on paper.

Now I understand her nice hands and all her ways.  I understand, too, how it came about that I found her one day turning over the pages of a volume by Anatole France, as though she could read French.