I had just lit the lamp when I was surprised to hear a knock at the door and opened it to find Miss May standing there, with an anxious expression on her face.
"Don't undress," she said, in a slightly shaking voice. "I have been full of all sorts of fears since you went away. I want you to sit up awhile and talk to me."
I accepted the amendment, as they say in deliberative bodies, with the greatest pleasure, for I would rather sit up with her than to sleep on the softest down ever made into a couch. She went to the window, which was innocent of glass, and threw open the wooden shutters.
"What did you hear to disturb you, a mouse?" I asked, jocularly.
"I don't know. The place is full of creepy sounds. The noise in the street continues and every step in the corridors makes the boards creak. Did you enjoy your dance?"
"Not specially," I said. And then I told her of the Métisse women I had seen, praising their appearance.
She did not seem to notice what I was saying. She acted as if in constant fear of something unpleasant.
"You do not care to talk as much as you thought you did," I remarked.
"No. I was tired and sleepy, but I did not like to be alone. Why can't I—there wouldn't be any harm, would there?—lie on this smaller bed just as I am, and you can get your sleep over yonder?"
Conflicting sentiments filled my brain as I listened. What a strange woman she was! Alarmed at the least approach on my part, when we were on a steamer deck, a veranda or in a carriage; and now proposing to drop to slumber in my very bedroom, as if it were nothing at all!