The boot ceased to creak, and I heard quite close to me, on the other
side of the wall, which was nothing but a thin partition, an armchair
being rolled across the carpet, and then a little cough, which seemed to
me to vibrate with emotion. It was he! But for the partition I could
have touched him with my finger. A few moments later I could distinguish
the almost imperceptible sound of footsteps on the carpet; this faint
sound rang violently in my head. All at once my breathing and my heart
both stopped together; there was a tap at the door. The tapping was
discreet, full of entreaty and delicacy. I wanted to reply, "Come in,"
but I had no longer any voice; and, besides, was it becoming to answer
like that, so curtly and plainly? I thought "Come in" would sound
horribly unseemly, and I said nothing. There was another tap. I should
really have preferred the door to have been broken open with a hatchet or
for him to have come down the chimney. In my agony I coughed faintly
among my sheets. That was enough; the door opened, and I divined from
the alteration in the light shed by the candles that some one at whom I
did not dare look was interposing between them and myself.

This some one, who seemed to glide across the carpet, drew near the bed,
and I could distinguish out of the corner of my eye his shadow on the
wall. I could scarcely restrain my joy; my Captain wore neither cotton
nightcap nor bandanna handkerchief. That was indeed something. However,
in this shadow which represented him in profile, his nose had so much
importance that amid all my uneasiness a smile flitted across my lips.
Is it not strange how all these little details recur to your mind? I did
not dare turn round, but I devoured with my eyes this shadow representing
my husband; I tried to trace in it the slightest of his gestures; I even
sought the varying expressions of his physiognomy, but, alas! in vain.