He went to see another patient in it, and one on its outskirts, but he had his dinner at the little inn where he put up Ruber, and all night long he sat by the bedside of his patient.

There the lovely white face, blind like a statue that never had eyes, and the perfect arm, which now and then, with a restless, uneasy, feeble toss, she would fling over the counterpane, the arm he had to watch as the very gate of death, grew into his heart.

He dreaded the moment when she would open her eyes, and his might no longer wander at will over her countenance.

Again and again in the night he put a hand under her head, and held a cooling draught to her lips; but not even when she drank did her eyes open: like a child too weak to trust itself, therefore free of all anxiety and fear, she took whatever came, questioning nothing.

He sat at the foot of the bed, where, with the slightest movement, he could, through the opening of the curtains, see her perfectly.
By some change of position, he had unknowingly drawn one of them back a little from between her and him, as he sat thinking about her.