ep.

She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the
things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine's heavy, scraping tread
as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. Some chickens were
clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the
grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert and Tonie talking under
the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and heavily
over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on--Tonie's slow, Acadian drawl,
Robert's quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French imperfectly
unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of the other
drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses.

When Edna awoke it was with the conviction that she had slept long and
soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine's step
was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had
gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over
her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.
Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of the
window, she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon was
far advanced. Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the
shade against the sloping keel of the overturned boat. He was reading
from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered what had become
of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three times as
she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.

Madame Antoine had laid some coarse, clean towels upon a chair, and had
placed a box of poudre de riz within easy reach. Edna dabbed the powder
upon her nose and cheeks as she looked at herself closely in the little
distorted mirror which hung on the wall above the basin. Her eyes were
bright and wide awake and her face glowed.

When she had completed her toilet she walked into the adjoining room.
She was very hungry. No one was there. But there was a cloth spread upon
the table that stood against the wall, and a cover was laid for one,
with a crusty brown loaf and a bottle of wine beside the plate. Edna bit
a piece from the brown loaf, tearing it with her strong, white teeth.
She poured some of the wine into the glass and drank it down. Then she
went softly out of doors, and plucking an orange from the low-hanging
bough of a tree, threw it at Robert, who did not know she was awake and
up.

An illumination broke over his w