"If I were to tell you, Mademoiselle Therese, you would see there
the hand of God."
She dropped the extra pillow she was carrying and then nearly fell
over it. "Oh, dear heart," she murmured, and ran off to the
kitchen.
I sank into bed as into a cloud and Therese reappeared very misty
and offering me something in a cup. I believe it was hot milk, and
after I drank it she took the cup and stood looking at me fixedly.
I managed to say with difficulty: "Go away," whereupon she
vanished as if by magic before the words were fairly out of my
mouth. Immediately afterwards the sunlight forced through the
slats of the jalousies its diffused glow, and Therese was there
again as if by magic, saying in a distant voice: "It's midday". .
. Youth will have its rights. I had slept like a stone for
seventeen hours.
I suppose an honourable bankrupt would know such an awakening: the
sense of catastrophe, the shrinking from the necessity of beginning
life again, the faint feeling that there are misfortunes which must
be paid for by a hanging. In the course of the morning Therese
informed me that the apartment usually occupied by Mr. Blunt was
vacant and added mysteriously that she intended to keep it vacant
for a time, because she had been instructed to do so.
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