At last, Laurent awoke one morning as if from a lethargic sleep, seemed surprised to see Thérèse at his right and Palmer at his left, offered each of them a hand, and asked them where he was and how he came there.
They deceived him a long while as to the length and severity of his illness, for he was deeply distressed when he saw how weak and emaciated he was. The first time that he looked in the glass he was frightened by his own image. In the early days of his convalescence he asked for Thérèse. He was told that she was asleep. He was greatly surprised.
"So she has become a genuine Italian woman, has she," he said, "that she sleeps in the day-time?"
Thérèse slept twenty-four hours without a break. Nature reasserted itself as soon as anxiety vanished.
Little by little, Laurent learned how devoted she had been to him, and he detected on her face the traces of excessive fatigue following on the heels of excessive grief. As he was still too weak to give his mind to anything, Thérèse installed herself by his side, sometimes reading to him, sometimes playing cards with him to amuse him, sometimes taking him to drive. Palmer was always with them.
Laurent's strength returned with a rapidity as extraordinary as his constitution. His brain was not always perfectly clear, however. One day, he said angrily to Thérèse, when he happened to be alone with her:
"By the way, when does the excellent Palmer propose to do us the honor of going away?"
Thérèse saw that there was a gap in his memory, and did not reply. Whereupon he made an effort to control himself, and added:
"You consider me ungrateful, my love, to speak thus of a man who has been almost as devoted to me as you yourself have; but I am not vain enough or simple enough not to understand that his reason for shutting himself up for a month in the room of a very disagreeable invalid was to have an excuse for not leaving you. Come, Thérèse, will you swear that he did it solely on my account?"
Thérèse was offended by that point-blank question, and by his use of the second person singular, which she had believed to be discarded forever between them. She shook her head, and tried to change the subject. Laurent yielded with ill grace; but he returned to it the next day; and as Thérèse, seeing that he was strong enough to do without her, was preparing to go away, he said, with unfeigned surprise: