He stood long with dejected head and drooping hands, and then groping his way back to his couch, lay down again.
And his dreams came back to him.
He was suddenly afire over a new idea for a comedy, and from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same he slaved at it and exulted in it day by day. He made long tramps into the country and lost himself continuously. Pretty generally he awoke from his fancies to find himself ravenously hungry, and without so much as a hint of an orient in his mind. But almost any village or hamlet was good for bread, of a sort, and for trustworthy eggs and new milk; and his necessities brought him into contact with the Walloon language, in which—or something very like it—Froissart wrote his chronicles. He picked up nuggets in the way of character—clean gold—and whether he were wandering with his own thoughts or struggling through the medium of this new tongue towards a knowledge of rustic Belgian life, or pruning and digging about his imaginations in his workshop, he was happy as a man need be.
Annette and he saw less and less of each other, but that was a circumstance to which he resigned himself with ease. They had taken two rooms at the corner of their corridor to begin with, a large room and a smaller one, and there was no need to move from their original quarters. The smaller chamber was used as a dressing-room. Paul’s circular tub was there, and the trunks with which the pair travelled, and coats and dresses were hung about the walls. But it was Annette’s whim one day in Paul’s absence to have a bed set up in this second apartment, and that same night, rising late from work, he found himself locked from his wife’s room. He had not been consulted as to this arrangement, and it struck a little cold upon him, but thinking that he would talk it over in the morning, he betook himself to sleep. Next day Annette complained of headache, and the pallor of her face and the heaviness of her eyes were a sufficing certificate to suffering.
‘I was very, very ill last night,’ she said pleadingly, ‘and I wanted to be alone. Oh! I can’t tell you how much I wanted to be alone.’
Paul took her hand in his, and smoothed it between his own. The skin was harsh and dry, and the little hand felt almost like a hot coal.
‘My dear,’ he said anxiously, ‘you are quite in a high fever. I shall run away for Laurent instantly.’
‘Why will you pester me?’ she asked, with a weary little spurt of temper. ‘I have no more need for a doctor than you have. I understand my own condition perfectly, and I want to go to sleep.’
‘But, my dear,’ said Paul, ‘these symptoms seem to be increasing, and you really ought to have advice. Laurent is an able man; you can trust him, I am sure.’
‘Oh! she cried, ‘your voice rasps me in the very middle of my brain. ‘Go away and let me sleep, for pity’s sake.’