The first great danger over, the countess and I grew accustomed to illness.  In spite of the confusion which the care of the sick entails, the count’s room, once so untidy, was now clean and inviting.  Soon we were like two beings flung upon a desert island, for not only do anxieties isolate, but they brush aside as petty the conventions of the world.  The welfare of the sick man obliged us to have points of contact which no other circumstances would have authorized.  Many a time our hands, shy or timid formerly, met in some service that we rendered to the count—­was I not there to sustain and help my Henriette?  Absorbed in a duty comparable to that of a soldier at the pickets, she forgot to eat; then I served her, sometimes on her lap, a hasty meal which necessitated a thousand little attentions.  We were like children at a grave.  She would order me sharply to prepare whatever might ease the sick man’s suffering; she employed me in a hundred petty ways.  During the time when actual danger obscured, as it does during the battle, the subtile distinctions which characterize the facts of ordinary life, she necessarily laid aside the reserve which all women, even the most unconventional, preserve in their looks and words and actions before the world or their own family.  At the first chirping of the birds she would come to relieve my watch, wearing a morning garment which revealed to me once more the dazzling treasures that in my folly I had treated as my own.  Always dignified, nay imposing, she could still be familiar.

Thus it came to pass that we found ourselves unconsciously intimate, half-married as it were.  She showed herself nobly confiding, as sure of me as she was of herself.  I was thus taken deeper and deeper into her heart.  The countess became once more my Henriette, Henriette constrained to love with increasing strength the friend who endeavored to be her second soul.  Her hand unresistingly met mine at the least solicitation; my eyes were permitted to follow with delight the lines of her beauty during the long hours when we listened to the count’s breathing, without driving her from their sight.  The meagre pleasures which we allowed ourselves—­sympathizing looks, words spoken in whispers not to wake the count, hopes and fears repeated and again repeated, in short, the thousand incidents of the fusion of two hearts long separated—­stand out in bright array upon the sombre background of the actual scene.  Our souls knew each other to their depths under this test, which many a warm affection is unable to bear, finding life too heavy or too flimsy in the close bonds of hourly intercourse.