Lighting just one candle, she sat in his room waiting for his return.
An hour passed, and at last she blew the candle out. He might think
it strange to find her there, sitting up for him; he might suspect,
and as yet she was sublimely unconscious that he had seen her. She
was sure when she had covered her face with the programme in the
theatre that the action had been in time; moreover, she was by no
means certain that from that distance his glasses had covered her
at all.
Mounting the uncarpeted stairs from his room to the floor above, she
stopped once or twice, thinking she heard a hansom pulling up in the
street. Her heart stopped with her and she held a breath in suspense;
but on each occasion it jingled on, losing the noise of its bells
in the murmuring night sounds which never quite die into silence in
that quarter.
When she reached her room, she lit a candle, holding it up before
the mirror on the dressing-table and gazing at her face in its
reflection.
"My God!" she whispered.
Truly, in the light of that one candle, she hardly recognized herself.
Violent sensations, deep emotions, these are the accelerations of
time. They produce--momentarily no doubt--the same effect as do the
passing of years over which such intensity of feeling is more evenly
distributed.
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