She gave a start, and he noticed with amazement that she began to tremble violently. She gave but one timid glance at him. Suddenly, the tears streamed from her eyes, she threw down the plate with such force that it shivered into fragments, rushed back from the threshold into the sitting-room and violently slammed the door behind her. An instant after, he heard the bolt pushed to. "For God's sake, child!" he cried, "what has come to you all of a sudden? What have I done to offend you? Open the door, and let us have a sensible talk together. Didn't I tell you that I had a headache? And who ever heard of such an idea as sketching in the middle of the night? Zenz! don't you hear? Won't you make it up again?" All in vain. After wasting his entreaties and at last his anger, for some time longer, on the tightly-closed door, he was finally obliged to give it up. His blood was in a whirl; he could not conceive now how he could have repulsed the poor creature in such cold-blooded fashion. "Perhaps her anger will pass over, if I leave her to herself for a while," he thought. "I am going out to take a little walk," he cried through the key-hole. "I must have a breath of fresh air. When I come back again, perhaps my headache will be gone and your fit of temper, too. In the mean while, pass away the time as pleasantly as you can." And he really did go out into the night; but he returned again before a quarter of an hour had passed--he was drawn back by some power that he himself could not understand. As he entered his sleeping-room, where the lamp was still burning steadily, it was empty. He passed quickly through the door, which was now unbolted, into the sitting-room. But here, too, no trace could be found of his guest, search as he would behind the curtains and in the dark corners. The light had not been extinguished and a bat had flown into the room, and the exertion of hunting him out again threw him into a perspiration. When at last he succeeded, and, exhausted by such a variety of excitement, had sunk back upon the sofa, he found that all the little knickknacks, which he had spread before her when they first arrived, were still lying on the table in the same order in which he had left them. The little dagger which his Creole friend had given him was the only thing he missed, and he could not find it though he searched for it everywhere. _BOOK III_. CHAPTER I.