"I met a gossiping acquaintance, who had also been passing a few weeks at the island. Heaven knows how it came about that I stopped him and inquired about my wife. He was very much surprised to hear that she had been there, indeed that she was there still. As in such a small place everybody met everybody else, he could not understand how so beautiful a woman could have escaped his notice. 'To be sure, she has lived in great retirement,' I stammered, and he found this very natural and praiseworthy of a charming young lady, and hoped the cure would be successful, and so left me; while I stood there like a fool for a full quarter of an hour, staring vacantly at the same flag-stone, and blocking peoples' way as if I had been a stopping-post. Yet she _must_ have been there; letters had daily passed back and forth; and then, what earthly reason could she have for trying to deceive me in this respect? But then again: you will readily understand that this incident, trifling as it was in itself, was well calculated to add new fuel to the fever that was raging within me. "I could not expect her back before the following day. How I survived the intervening hours will always remain a mystery to me. I was incapable of any occupation, of any connected thought or action. I had just sufficient strength and reason left to sit by the side of the poor, feverish child, and apply the ice-bandages, and count the hairs on its forehead. "Even when night came I would not leave my post. I dreaded to dream. Then came the morning again, and noon and afternoon, and still no news. But at length a drosky drove up, the house-door was opened, the stairs creaked under a light step, I sprang to my feet and rushed to meet her; just then she entered the door, and my first look in her face strengthened all my horrible suspicions. "Or no; it was not her face. I have no right to do this actress an injustice; she had her face as completely under control as ever--the innocent violet eyes, the Madonna mouth, the clear forehead--and yet it _was_ her face that sent a shudder to my inmost heart. Was that the mien of a mother, hastening to her child that lay at the door of death? of a wife returning, after such anxious weeks of separation, to the husband whom she pretended to have married for love?