increased by her ignorance of the life within and about her, as well
as from her loneliness. She had not had many companions, so all desires
went from her only to return to her.

Sometimes she was in such a peculiar state that she would put her hands
over her face, as if doubting her own identity. Was she herself only
an illusion, and would she suddenly disappear some day and vanish into
nothingness? Who would tell her the truth?

One evening in the following May, on this same balcony where she had
spent so much time in vague dreams, she suddenly broke into tears.
She was not low-spirited in the least, but it seemed to her as if her
anxiety arose from a vain expectation of a visit from someone. Yet who
was there to come? It was very dark; the Clos-Marie marked itself out
like a great black spot under the sky filled with stars, and she could
but vaguely distinguish the heavy masses of the old elm-trees of the
Bishop's garden, and of the park of the Hotel Voincourt. Alone the
window of the chapel sent out a little light. If no one were to come,
why did her heart beat so rapidly? It was nothing new, this feeling of
waiting, or of hope, but it was dated from the long ago, from her early
youth; it was like a desire, a looking forward for something which
had grown with her growth, and ended in this feverish anxiety of her
seventeen years. Nothing would have surprised her, as for weeks she
had heard the sound of voices in this mysterious corner, peopled by her
imagination. The "Golden Legend" had left there its supernatural world
of saints and martyrs, and the miracle was all ready to appear there.
She understood well that everything was animated, that the voices came
from objects hitherto silent; that the leaves of the trees, the waters
of the Chevrotte, and the stones of the Cathedral spoke to her. But what
was it that all these whisperings from the Invisible wished to explain?