as follows:

"The kiss you are giving me, Valentine, is the last kiss that I shall
have from you as a girl. Your husband--for Georges is that now--"

At these words I shuddered slightly, and by a singular freak of my brain
pictured to myself Monsieur Georges--Georges--my husband--in a cotton
night cap and a dressing-gown. The vision flashed across my mind in the
midst of the storm. I saw him just as plainly as if he had been there.
It was dreadful. The nightcap came over his forehead, down to his
eyebrows, and he said to me, pressing my hand; "At last, Valentine; you
are mine; do you love me? oh! tell me, do you love me?" And as his
head moved as he uttered these words, the horrible tuft at the end of his
nightcap waggled as an accompaniment.

"No," I said to myself, "it is impossible for my husband to appear in
such a fashion; let me banish this image--and yet my father wears the
hideous things, and my brother, who is quite young, has them already.
Men wear them at all ages, unless though--" It is frightful to relate,
but Georges now appeared to me with a red-and-green bandanna handkerchief
tied round his head. I would have given ten years of my life to be two
hours older, and hurriedly passed my hand across my eyes to drive away
these diabolical visions.

However, mamma, who had been still speaking all the time, attributing
this movement to the emotion caused by her words, said, with great
sweetness:

"Do not be alarmed, my dear Valentine; perhaps I am painting the picture
in too gloomy colors; but my experience and my love render this duty