Clara used to sleep fully dressed on the sofa in the room next to
mine, with the door open. Whenever I moved she was at once at
my bedside: I saw her by night, leaning over my bed, her hair
disarranged, and eyes winking with sleeplessness and fatigue. She
herself measured out my physic, and raised my head from the pillow.
When, in moments of consciousness, I wanted to thank her, she put a
finger to her lips as a sign that the doctor had enjoined quietness. I
do not know how many nights she spent at my bedside. She looked very
tired in the daytime, and, when sitting near me in an armchair,
sometimes dozed off in the middle of a sentence. Waking up she smiled
at me, and dozed again. At nights she walked to and fro in her own
room, in order to keep awake; but so softly that I could not have
known it but for the shadow moving on the wall, which I saw through
the open door. Once, when she was near me, not knowing how to express
my gratitude, I raised her hand to my lips; she stooped down quickly,
and, before I could prevent it, kissed my hand. But I must confess
that I was not always so grateful. Sick people as a rule are fanciful
and irritable; I felt irritated at her being so tall. I felt a kind of
resentment that she was not like Aniela; for so long a time I had been
in the habit of acknowledging grace and beauty only in so far as they
approached the grace and beauty of that other one.
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