But just before I had forgotten everything the door of the inner room creaked and opened. My side was toward it and I did not look round. I opened my eyes and feebly waved my left hand. Then a voice came, clear and fresh: "Jean, is it you? Well, is the duke at the house?" I must be dreaming; that was my immediate conviction, for the voice that I heard was a voice I knew well, but one not likely to be heard here, in Jean's cottage, at four o'clock in the morning. Decidedly I was dreaming, and as in order to dream a man must be asleep, I was pleased at the idea and nodded happily, smiling and blinking in self-congratulation. But that pleasant minute of illusion was my last; for the voice cried in tones too full of animation, too void of dreamy vagueness, too real and actual to let me longer set them down as made of my own brain: "Heaven! Why, it's Mr. Aycon! How in the world do you come here?" To feel surprise at the Duchess of Saint-Maclou doing anything which she might please to do or being anywhere that the laws of Nature rendered it possible she should be, was perhaps a disposition of mind of which I should have been by this time cured; yet I was surprised to find her standing in the doorway that led from Jean's little bedroom dressed in a neat walking gown and a very smart hat, her hands clasped in the surprise which she shared with me and her eyes gleaming with an amused delight which found, I fear, no answer in my heavy bewildered gaze. "I'm getting warm," said I at first, but then I made an effort to rouse myself. "I was a bit hurt, you know," I went on; "that little villain Pierre--" "Hurt!" cried the duchess, springing forward. "How? Oh, my dear Mr. Aycon, how pale you are!" After that remark of the duchess', I remember nothing which occurred for a long while. In fact, just as I had apprehended that I was awake, that the duchess was real, and that it was most remarkable to find her in Jean's cottage, I fainted, and the duchess, the cottage, and everything else vanished from sight and mind. When next I became part of the waking world I found myself on the sofa of the little room in the duke's house which I was beginning to know so well. I felt very comfortable: my arm was neatly bandaged, I wore a clean shirt. Suzanne was spreading a meal on the table, and the duchess, in a charming morning gown, was smiling at me and humming a tune. The clock on the mantelpiece marked a quarter to eight. "Now I know all about it," said the duchess, perceiving my revival. "I've heard it all from Suzanne and Jean--or anyhow I can guess the rest. And you mustn't tire yourself by talking. I had you brought here so that you might be well looked after; because we're so much indebted to you, you know." "Is the duke here?" I asked.