He saw Marguerite. She was
sitting, in an uncomfortable posture, in the rather high-seated
arm-chair in which formerly, when the room was her studio, she used to
sit at her work. Her head had dropped, on one shoulder. She was asleep.
On the table a candle burned. His heart behaved strangely. He flushed.
All his flesh tingled. The gate creaked horribly as he tiptoed into the
patch of garden. He leaned over the little chasm between the level of
the garden and the window, and supported himself with a hand on the
lower sash. He pushed the blind sideways with the other hand.
"Marguerite!" in a whisper. Then louder: "Marguerite!"
She did not stir. She was in a deep sleep. Her hands hung limp. Her face
was very pale and very fatigued. She liberated the same sadness as the
sound of the mandolin and the gleam of silver in the June sky, but it
was far more poignant. At the spectacle of those weary and unconscious
features and of the soft, bodily form, George's resentment was
annihilated. He wondered at his resentment. He was aware of nothing in
himself but warm, protective love. Tenderness surged out from the
impenetrable secrecy of his heart, filled him, overflowed, and floated
in waves towards the sleeper. In the intense sadness, and in the
uncertainty of events, he was happy.
An older man might have paused, but without hesitancy George put his
foot on the window-sill, pushed down the window farther, and clambered
into the room in which he had first seen Marguerite.
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