“Wake up!” she said, severely.
Still he didn’t move. She clutched his big shoulders and tried to shake him, but he only groaned.
“Oh, do wake up!” she cried, in a sort of desperation.
“All right!” he murmured, but his eyes remained closed.
She was on the point of tears! She would really have liked to hurt him. She seized his hair and pulled it vigorously, and at once he sat up, dazed and resentful.
“Look here!” he said. “That’s no way.”
“It’s seven o’clock!” she said coldly. “I should think, if you’re so sleepy in the mornings, you’d go to bed earlier.”
She herself was very weary and depressed. She had, as she had expected, lain awake a long, long time, unhappy in the darkness of that unfamiliar room, with the shutters all closed, and no sight of the sky to console her. At home she had always kept her windows unobscured so that lying in bed she could watch the moon, the stars, the clouds, the sky whether clear, stormy or ominous. The very shapes of the furniture had distressed her, she had tried to make them out in their corners, as she had listened to the muffled, unfamiliar city noises.
She wasn’t at her best in the morning; that was a recognized fact at home, and she was always carefully let alone. But Gilbert put her to shame. When at last he was roused, he was marvelously cheerful; he got up whistling, and set about dressing in leisurely fashion, talking a great deal. He was very much pleased at occupying the majestic room on the second floor, it gave solidity to his new importance as a married man. He thought his mother had arranged it very tastefully, he pointed out to Claudine the new velvet lambrequin on the mantelpiece and the pincushion the old lady had made for them. He picked it up from the bureau and looked at it with affectionate eyes—a tremendous long blue sausage covered with pleated silk and lace.
“Wonderful, at her age, isn’t it?”