breath failed her--during the day she had feared syncope.

"If you are willing," Phillis said, "I will sleep near mamma. I am
afraid of not hearing her at night, and she is suffering."

He began by refusing, then he consented to this arrangement; and to thank
him for it she stayed with him in his office, affectionate, full of
tenderness and caresses, until he went to his room.

He was then free to sleep or not; whether he groaned or talked she could
not hear him, since there was no communicating door between his room and
that of his mother-in-law; his voice certainly would not penetrate the
partition.

Who could have told him on the night that he decided to marry, that he
would come to such a pass--to be afraid, to hide himself from her who
brought him the calmness of sleep; and that by his fault, by a chain of
imprudences and stupidities, as if it were written that in everything he
would owe his sufferings to himself, and that if he ever succumbed to the
whirlwind that swept him along, it would be by his own deed, by his own
hand? At last he had assured the tranquillity of his nights, and as a
further precaution, although he did not fear that Phillis would enter his
room while he slept, to surprise him--she who dared not look in the face
what suspicion showed her--he locked his door. Naturally, Phillis could
not always sleep with her mother; but he would find a way to suggest
frankly their sleeping apart, and surely he could find one in the
storehouse of medicine.

These cares and similar fears were not of a nature to dispose him to
sleep, and besides for a long time he had suffered from an exasperating