He got up several times more, arranging things to his satisfaction and then threw himself upon the bed, disposed to keep his watch all night, if it was necessary. He did not wish to sleep. No, he ought not to drowse…. And half an hour later he was slumbering profoundly without knowing at what moment he had slid down the soft slopes of sleep.
Suddenly he awoke as if some one had hit his head with a club. His ears were buzzing…. It was the rude impression of one who sleeps without wishing to and feels himself shaken by reviving restlessness. Some moments passed without his taking in the situation. Then he suddenly recalled it all…. Alone! She had not come!… He did not know whether minutes or hours had passed by.
Something besides his uneasiness had brought him back to life. He suspected that in the dark silence some real thing was approaching. A little mouse appeared to be moving down the corridor. The shoes placed outside one of the doors were moved with a slight creaking. Ferragut had the vague impression of air that is displaced by the slow advance of a body.
The door trembled. The chair was pushed back, little by little, very gently pushed. In the darkness he descried a moving shadow, dark and dense. He made a movement.
"Shhhh-h!" sighed a ghostly voice, a voice from the other world. "It is
I."
Instinctively he raised his right hand to the wall and turned on the light.
Under the electric light it was she,—a different Freya from any that he had ever seen, with her wealth of hair falling in golden serpents over her shoulders covered with an Asiatic tunic that enveloped her like a cloud.
It was not the Japanese kimono, vulgarized by commerce. It was made in one piece of Hindustanic cloth, embroidered with fantastic flowers and capriciously draped. Through its fine texture could be perceived the flesh as though it were a wrapping of multicolored air.
She uttered a protest. Then, imitating Ulysses' gesture, she reached her hand toward the wall … and all was darkness.
* * * * *