lamp. A pleasant face, too; not exactly classic, but rosy and frank; and
then she has that animation which so many pretty women lack.

Madame Menin has forgotten something else. She has forgotten to shut my
window. She has designs upon my life!

I have just shut the window. The night is calm, its stars twinkling
through a haze. The year ends mournfully.

I remember at school once waking suddenly on such a night as this, to
find the moonlight streaming into my eyes. At such a moment it is always
a little hard to collect one's scattered senses, and take in the midnight
world around, so unhomely, so absolutely still. First I cast my eyes
along the two rows of beds that stretched away down the dormitory--two
parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled under their
blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as they lay near or
far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil lamp half-way down the
room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the enclosure of yellow
curtains surrounding the usher's bed.

Not a sound about me; all was still. But without, my ear, excited and
almost feverishly awake, caught the sound of a strange call, very sweet,
again and again repeated--fugitive notes breathing appeal, tender and
troubled. Now they grew quite distant, and I heard no more than a
phantom of sound; now they came near, passed over my head, and faded
again into the distance. The moon's clear rays invited me to clear up
the mystery. I sprang from my bed, and ran in my nightshirt to open the
window. It was about eleven o'clock. Together the keen night-air and
the moonlight wrapped me round, thrilling me with delight. The large
courtyard lay deserted with its leafless poplars and spiked railings.