f an unexpected arrival
and I went to see her that same evening. Though it was not more than ten
o'clock, the lights were already out in the strictly-managed
boarding-house. There was a row of brass candlesticks on the hall-table.
The man-servant wanted to give me one; but I was impatient, thanked him
hurriedly and ran upstairs in the dark.

I could not have told why I was so happy; for, though I should not have
been willing to confess it, I had long lost all my illusions about the
girl. But she was so beautiful; and her passive temperament left so much
room for my fancy! I never made any headway; but at the moment it always
seemed to me as if I were heard and understood. I used to write on that
unresisting life as one writes on the sand; and, the easier I found it
to make the impress of my will, the faster was it obliterated.

When I reached the floor on which Rose's bedroom was, I stopped in the
dark passage. A narrow streak of light showed me that her door was not
quite shut. Then, gathering up my skirts to deaden their sound, I felt
along the wall and crept softly, on tip-toe, so as to take her by
surprise. With infinite precautions, I slowly pushed the door open. I
first caught sight of a corner of the empty bed, with its white curtains
still closed; then of a candle-end burning on the table and of flowers
and a broken vase lying on the ground. What could she be doing?

I was so far from imagining the truth that I do not know how I beheld it
without betraying my presence by a movement or a sound. There was a
young man in the room.

I saw his face, straight opposite me, near the guttering candle. A man
in Rose's bedroom! A friend, no doubt; a lover, perhaps! But why had she
never mentioned him to me? I had been away a month; and in not one of
her letters had she ever spoken of him. A friend? A lover? Could she
have a whole existence of which I knew nothing? Could her quiet life be
feigned? But why?

At the risk of revealing my presence, I opened the door still farther;
and then I saw her profile bending forward. Thus posed, it stood out
against the black marble of the mantel-piece like a cameo. Rose had let
down her hair, as she did every evening. Her bodice was unfastened; and
the two golden tresses brought forward over her breast meekly followed
the curve of her half-exposed bosom. She was not astonished, she was not
even excited. She seemed to acquiesce in the man's presence in her room;
it was no doubt cust