And she went away, smiling.

At length I was alone.  I listened; the doors were being closed, I heard a carriage roll along the road; the flame of the two candles placed upon the mantelshelf quivered silently and were reflected in the looking-glass.

I thought about the ceremony of that morning, the dinner, the ball.  I said to myself, clenching my fists to concentrate my thoughts:  “How was Marie dressed?  She was dressed in—­dressed in—­dressed in—­” I repeated the words aloud to impart more authority to them and oblige my mind to reply; but do what I would, it was impossible for me to drive away the thought that invaded my whole being.

“He is coming.  What is he doing?  Where is he?  Perhaps he is on the stairs now.  How shall I receive him when he comes?”

I loved him; oh! with my whole soul, I can acknowledge it now; but I loved him quite at the bottom of my heart.  In order to think of him I went down into the very lowest chamber of my heart, bolted the door, and crouched down in the darkest corner.

At last, at a certain moment, the floor creaked, a door was opened in the passage with a thousand precautions, and I heard the tread of a boot—­a boot!

The boot ceased to creak, and I heard quite close to me, on the other side of the wall, which was nothing but a thin partition, an armchair being rolled across the carpet, and then a little cough, which seemed to me to vibrate with emotion.  It was he!  But for the partition I could have touched him with my finger.  A few moments later I could distinguish the almost imperceptible sound of footsteps on the carpet; this faint sound rang violently in my head.  All at once my breathing and my heart both stopped together; there was a tap at the door.  The tapping was discreet, full of entreaty and delicacy.  I wanted to reply, “Come in,” but I had no longer any voice; and, besides, was it becoming to answer like that, so curtly and plainly?  I thought “Come in” would sound horribly unseemly, and I said nothing.  There was another tap.  I should really have preferred the door to have been broken open with a hatchet or for him to have come down the chimney.  In my agony I coughed faintly among my sheets.  That was enough; the door opened, and I divined from the alteration in the light shed by the candles that some one at whom I did not dare look was interposing between them and myself.

This some one, who seemed to glide across the carpet, drew near the bed, and I could distinguish out of the corner of my eye his shadow on the wall.  I could scarcely restrain my joy; my Captain wore neither cotton nightcap nor bandanna handkerchief.  That was indeed something.  However, in this shadow which represented him in profile, his nose had so much importance that amid all my uneasiness a smile flitted across my lips.  Is it not strange how all these little details recur to your mind?  I did not dare turn round, but I devoured with my eyes this shadow representing my husband; I tried to trace in it the slightest of his gestures; I even sought the varying expressions of his physiognomy, but, alas! in vain.