ht
out shadows that perplexed me, because I could not fully make out the
objects that produced them after dazzling my eyes by gazing out into the
crimson light.

Some one came in; it was the maiden to prepare for my supper. She began
to lay the cloth at one end of the large table. There was a smaller one
close by me. I mustered up my voice, which seemed a little as if it was
getting beyond my control, and called to her,--

"Will you let me have my supper here on this table?"

She came near; the light fell on her while I was in shadow. She was a
tall young woman, with a fine strong figure, a pleasant face, expressive
of goodness and sense, and with a good deal of comeliness about it, too,
although the fair complexion was bronzed and reddened by weather, so as
to have lost much of its delicacy, and the features, as I had afterwards
opportunity enough of observing, were anything but regular. She had white
teeth, however, and well-opened blue eyes--grave-looking eyes which had
shed tears for past sorrow--plenty of light-brown hair, rather elaborately
plaited, and fastened up by two great silver pins. That was all--perhaps
more than all--I noticed that first night. She began to lay the cloth
where I had directed. A shiver passed over me: she looked at me, and
then said,--

"The gentleman is cold: shall I light the stove?"

Something vexed me--I am not usually so impatient: it was the coming-on
of serious illness--I did not like to be noticed so closely; I believed
that food would restore me, and I did not want to have my meal delayed,
as I feared it might be by the lighting of the stove; and most of all I
was feverishly annoyed by movement. I answered sharply and abruptly,--

"No; bring supper quickly; that is all I want."

Her quiet, sad eyes met mine for a moment; but I saw no change in their
expression, as if I had vexed her by my rudeness: her countenance did
not for an instant lose its look of patient sense, and that is pretty
nearly all I can remember of Thekla that first evening at Heppenheim.

I suppose I ate my supper, or tried to do so, at any rate; and I must
have gone to bed, for days after I became conscious of lying there,
weak as a new-born babe, and with a sense of past pain in all my weary
limbs. As is the case in recovering from fever, one does not care to
connect facts, much less to reason upon them; so how I came to be lying
in that strange bed, in that large, half-furnished room; in what house
t