'Gilberte!' called Henriette, gently. In the dim light that filtered through the red curtains drawn before the windows she could see her friend's pretty round head, which had slipped from off the pillow and was resting on one of her bare arms, whilst all around streamed her beautiful black hair, which had become uncoiled. 'Gilberte!'
The young woman moved, stretched herself, but did not at first open her eyes. All at once, however, raising her head and recognising Henriette, she exclaimed: 'Why, is it you? What o'clock is it?'
When she learnt that six was striking she felt uncomfortable, and in order to hide it began jesting, asking whether that were a proper time to come and awaken people. Then, at the first question respecting her husband, she exclaimed: 'But he hasn't come home. I hardly expect he will be here before nine o'clock. Why should he come back so early?'
And as she still continued smiling in her sleepy torpor, Henriette had to insist: 'But I tell you that they have been fighting at Bazeilles since daybreak, and as I am very anxious about my husband----'
'Oh! my dear,' exclaimed Gilberte, 'there is no occasion for anxiety. My husband is so prudent that he would have been here long ago had there been the slightest danger. As long as you don't see him you may be quite easy.'
Henriette was impressed by this remark. Delaherche was certainly not the man to expose himself unnecessarily. And, thereupon, feeling reassured, she approached the windows, drew back the curtains, and threw the shutters open. The ruddy light from the sky where the sun was now beginning to show itself, gilding the fog, streamed into the room. One of the windows remained slightly open, and now in this large, warm chamber, so close and suffocating a moment previously, the cannon could be distinctly heard.
Sitting up, with one elbow buried in the pillow, Gilberte gazed at the sky with her pretty, expressionless eyes. Her chemise had slipped from one of her shoulders, and her skin looked beautifully pink and delicate under her scattered locks of black hair. 'And so they are fighting,' she murmured. 'Fighting so early! How ridiculous it is to fight!'
Henriette, however, had just espied a pair of gloves, military gloves, lying forgotten upon a side table, and at this significant discovery she could not restrain a start. Then Gilberte flushed a deep crimson, and drawing her friend to the side of the bed, in a confused, coaxing way, she hid her face against her shoulder. 'I felt you must know it, that you must have seen him,' she murmured; 'you must not judge me too severely, darling. I have known him so long. You remember, at Charleville, I confessed to you----.' And then, lowering her voice, she continued, with a touch of emotion through which there stole, however, something like a little laugh: 'You do not know how he spoke to me when I met him again yesterday. And, only think, he has to fight this morning, and perhaps he will be killed. What could I do?' She had simply wished that he might be happy before he went to risk his life for his country on the battlefield. And such was her bird-like giddiness, that it was this which somehow made her smile, despite all her confusion. 'Do you condemn me?' she asked.