reen Box, slipped into the old
hovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus who was asleep, blew
out his candle, and did not go to bed.

Thus an hour passed away. Weary, at length, and fancying that bed and
sleep were one, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing,
making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm of
emotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant. Sleeplessness
is a cruelty which night inflicts on man. Gwynplaine suffered greatly.
For the first time in his life, he was not pleased with himself. Ache of
heart mingled with gratified vanity. What was he to do? Day broke at
last; he heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids. No truce for
him, however. The letter was ever in his mind. Every word of it came
back to him in a kind of chaos. In certain violent storms within the
soul thought becomes a liquid. It is convulsed, it heaves, and
something rises from it, like the dull roaring of the waves. Flood and
flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before the
rock; hail and rain clouds with the light shining through their breaks;
the petty flights of useless foam; wild swell broken in an instant;
great efforts lost; wreck appearing all around; darkness and universal
dispersion--as these things are of the sea, so are they of man.
Gwynplaine was a prey to such a storm.

At the acme of his agony, his eyes still closed, he heard an exquisite
voice saying, "Are you asleep, Gwynplaine?" He opened his eyes with a
start, and sat up. Dea was standing in the half-open doorway. Her
ineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips. She was standing there,
charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came, as it
were, a sacred moment. Gwynplaine watched her, startled, dazzled,
awakened. Awakened from what?--from sleep? no, from sleeplessness. It
was she, it was Dea; and suddenly he felt in the depths of his being the
indescribable wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good over
evil; the miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the blind
girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence,
dissipated all the darkness within him; the curtain of cloud was
dispersed from the soul as if drawn by an invisible hand, and a sky of
azure, as though by celestial enchantment, again spread over
Gwynplaine's conscience. In a moment he became by the virtue of that
angel, the great and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man. Such