When I retired that night to a spacious and magnificent apartment, and to a luxurious Russian couch, the pillows of which were edged with the finest lace--ye gods! a laced pillow after mine in the camp, a tent-peg bag stuffed with dirty straw--I was soon sensible of the difference of sleeping indoors and within a house, after being under canvas and accustomed so long to my airy tent. I felt as if stifling; and to this was added the effect of the wines, of which, incited by the hospitality of Volhonski, I had partaken too freely. I forgot all about my promises to be up betimes, even before daybreak, in the morning, and to ride with him as near to our posts as he dared venture, to leave me in a place of safety; I forgot that if I remained in secret at the castle or château of Yalta, the great danger and the grave suspicion to which I subjected him, his sister, and all there; I forgot, too, the risk I ran personally of being taken and shot as a spy, perhaps, after short inquiry, or no inquiry at all. I thought only of the brilliant creature whose voice seemed hovering in my ear, and the remembered touch of whose velvet hand seemed still to linger in mine. The more I saw of Valerie Volhonski, the more she dazzled, charmed, and--must I admit it?--consoled me for the loss I had sustained in England far away. She seemed quite aware of the admiration her beauty excited--of the love that was inspiring me, and she seemed, I thought, in my vanity, not unwilling to return it! Why, then, should I not ask her to love me? What to us were the miserable ambitions of emperors and sultans; the intrigues and treacheries of statesmen; the wars, the battles, the difference of religion, race, and clime? And so, as the sparkling cliquot did its work, I wove the shining web of the future, and gave full reins to my heated fancy as the hours of the silent night stole on. But the morning found me ill, feverish, decidedly delirious; and Volhonski, to his great mortification, had to leave me and ride off with his Cossacks, and reach Sebastopol by making a long detour through that part of the country which we so stupidly left _open_--round by Tepekerman and Bagtchi Serai, and thence by the Belbeck into the Valley of Inkermann. I must have been in rather a helpless condition for at least two days--days wherein the short intervals of ease and sense seemed to me wearisome and perplexing indeed; while to see Madame Tolstoff and old Ivan Yourivitch gliding noiselessly about my room in fur slippers, caused me to marvel sorely whether I was dreaming or awake; whether or not I was myself, or some one else; for all about me seemed strange, unusual, and unreal. On the morning of the third day I was greatly better, and on passing a hand over my head, found that my hair was gone--shorn to a crop of the true military Russian pattern, doubtless by a doctor's order. Then I saw Madame Tolstoff and Valerie Volhonski standing near and smiling at my perplexity.