And yet when he returned home in the evening she told him that her mother was not well, and begged him to examine her.  This examination proved that Madame Cormier was in her usual health; but she complained that her breath failed her—­during the day she had feared syncope.

“If you are willing,” Phillis said, “I will sleep near mamma.  I am afraid of not hearing her at night, and she is suffering.”

He began by refusing, then he consented to this arrangement; and to thank him for it she stayed with him in his office, affectionate, full of tenderness and caresses, until he went to his room.

He was then free to sleep or not; whether he groaned or talked she could not hear him, since there was no communicating door between his room and that of his mother-in-law; his voice certainly would not penetrate the partition.

Who could have told him on the night that he decided to marry, that he would come to such a pass—­to be afraid, to hide himself from her who brought him the calmness of sleep; and that by his fault, by a chain of imprudences and stupidities, as if it were written that in everything he would owe his sufferings to himself, and that if he ever succumbed to the whirlwind that swept him along, it would be by his own deed, by his own hand?  At last he had assured the tranquillity of his nights, and as a further precaution, although he did not fear that Phillis would enter his room while he slept, to surprise him—­she who dared not look in the face what suspicion showed her—­he locked his door.  Naturally, Phillis could not always sleep with her mother; but he would find a way to suggest frankly their sleeping apart, and surely he could find one in the storehouse of medicine.

These cares and similar fears were not of a nature to dispose him to sleep, and besides for a long time he had suffered from an exasperating nervous insomnia.  As the night was warm he thought a little fresh air would calm him, and he opened the window; if this freshness did not calm him, at least it would make him sleep.

Obliged to improvise a bed in her mother’s room, Phillis placed it against the partition that separated her from her husband, but without preconcerted intention, simply by accident, because it was the only place where she could put the bed.  A little after midnight an unusual noise awoke her; she sat up to listen and to recover herself.  It seemed as if this noise came from her husband’s room.  Alarmed, she placed her ear against the partition.  She was not deceived; they were stifled groans, moans that were repeated at short intervals.

Carefully yet quickly she left her bed, and as the dawn was already shining in the windows, she was able to leave the room without making any noise.  Reaching the door of her husband’s room she listened; she was not deceived; they were indeed groans, but louder and sadder than those she had so often heard during the night.  She tried the door, but it was evidently locked on the inside.  What was the matter with him?  She must know, must go to him, and give him relief.  She thought of knocking, of shaking the door; but as he did not reply when she tried to open it, it was because he did not hear or did not wish to hear.  Then she thought of the terrace; from there she could see what happened, and if it were necessary she would break a pane to enter.