PART I
I.
Motionless under the white coverlet of her bed, Anna appeared to have been sleeping soundly for the past two hours.
Her sister Laura, who occupied a little cot at the other end of the big room, had that evening much prolonged her customary reading, which followed the last gossip of the day between the girls. But no sooner had she put out her candle than Anna opened her eyes and fixed them upon Laura's bed, which glimmered vaguely white in the distance.
Anna was wide awake.
She dared not move, she dared not even sigh; and all her life was in her gaze, trying to penetrate the secret of the dusk—trying to see whether really her sister was asleep. It was a winter's night, and as the hour advanced the room became colder and colder; but Anna did not feel it.
The moment the light had been extinguished a flame had leapt from her heart to her brain, diffusing itself through all her members, scalding her veins, scorching her flesh, quickening the beating of her pulses. As in the height of fever, she felt herself burning up; her tongue was dry, her head was hot; and the icy air that entered her lungs could not quench the fire in her, could not subdue the tumultuous irruption of her young blood.
Often, to relieve herself, she had longed to cry out, to moan; but the fear of waking Laura held her silent. It was not, however, so much from the great heat throbbing at her temples that she suffered, as from her inability to know for certain whether her sister was asleep.