Would she not see the red tip of my cigar moving about in the dark
and feel that I wanted eminently to know what the doctor had said?
I am afraid it is a proof my anxieties had made me gross that I
should have taken in some degree for granted that at such an hour,
in the midst of the greatest change that could take place
in her life, they were uppermost also in Miss Tita's mind.
My servant came down and spoke to me; he knew nothing save
that the doctor had gone after a visit of half an hour.
If he had stayed half an hour then Miss Bordereau was still alive:
it could not have taken so much time as that to enunciate
the contrary. I sent the man out of the house; there were moments
when the sense of his curiosity annoyed me, and this was one of them.
HE had been watching my cigar tip from an upper window,
if Miss Tita had not; he could not know what I was after and I
could not tell him, though I was conscious he had fantastic
private theories about me which he thought fine and which I,
had I known them, should have thought offensive.
I went upstairs at last but I ascended no higher than the
sala. The door of Miss Bordereau's apartment was open,
showing from the parlor the dimness of a poor candle.
I went toward it with a light tread, and at the same moment
Miss Tita appeared and stood looking at me as I approached.
"She's better--she's better," she said, even before I had asked.
"The doctor has given her something; she woke up, came back to life
while he was there.
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