“But, yes!” he said—and smiled. “But, yes—I will tell you. It is very simple. I think perhaps I was overtired. In any case, I was restless and could not sleep, and so I came in here, and—well, since I must confess—I imagine I finally fell asleep in my chair.”
“Is that all?” she asked—and there was a curious insistence in her voice. “You look as though you were ill. Are you telling me all?”
“Everything!” he said. “And I am not ill, Mademoiselle Valérie”—he laughed again—“you would hear me complain fast enough if I were! I am not a model patient.”
She shook her head, as though she would not enter into the lightness of his reply; and again her eyes sought the floor. And, as he watched her, the colour now came and went from her cheeks, and there was trouble in her face, and hesitancy, and irresolution.
“What is it, Mademoiselle Valérie?”—his forced lightness was gone now. She was frightened, and nervous, and ill at ease—that she should be standing here like this at this hour of night, of course. Yes, that was it. Naturally that would be so. He lifted his hand and drew it heavily across his forehead. She was frightened. If he might only take her in his arms, and draw her head to his shoulder, and hold her there, and soothe her! It seemed that all his being cried to him to do that. “Well, why don't you?”—that inner voice was flashing the suggestion quick upon him—“well, why don't you? You could do it as a priest, in the rôle of priest, you know—like a father to one of his flock. Go ahead, here's your chance—be the priest, be the priest! Don't you want to hold her in your arms—be the priest, be the priest!”
She had not answered his question. He found himself answering it for her.
“What is it, Mademoiselle Valérie? You must not let a dream affect you, you know. It is gone now. And you can see that——”
“It is strange”—she spoke almost to herself. “I—I was so sure that I heard you call.”
Why was he not moving toward her? Why was he clinging in a sort of tenacious frenzy to the desk? Why was he not obeying the promptings of that inner voice? It would be quite a natural thing to do what that voice prompted—and Valérie, Valérie who would never be his, would for a moment, snatched out of all eternity, be in his arms.
“But you must not let such a thing as a dream affect you”—he seemed to be speaking without volition of his own, and he seemed stupidly able to say but the same thing over again. “And, see, it is over, and you are awake now to find that no one is really in trouble after all.”