She fell back at once, weighed down with sleep, smiled once more, murmured.
"Oh! I'm so … so sleepy!…" and went off again into her dreams.
He could not help laughing: he kissed her childish lips more tenderly. He watched the girl sleeping for a moment longer, and got up quietly. She gave a comfortable sigh when he was gone. He tried not to wake her as he dressed, though there was no danger of that: and when he had done he sat in the chair near the window and watched the steaming smoking river which looked as though it were covered with ice: and he fell into a brown study in which there hovered music, pastoral, melancholy.
From time to time she half opened her eyes and looked at him vaguely, took a second or two, smiled at him, and passed from one sleep to another. She asked him the time.
"A quarter to nine."
Half asleep she pondered:
"What! Can it be a quarter to nine?"
At half-past nine she stretched, sighed, and said that she was going to get up.
It was ten o'clock before she stirred. She was petulant.
"Striking again!… The clock is fast!…" He laughed and went and sat on the bed by her side. She put her arms round his neck and told him her dreams. He did not listen very attentively and interrupted her with little love words. But she made him be silent and went on very seriously, as though she were telling something of the highest importance: