In the moonlight that I had left behind me, I saw again the man
whom I had discovered at the window. His figure, tall and slim; his
movements, graceful and easy, were in harmony with his beautiful face. He
lifted his long finely-shaped hands, and clasped them with a frantic
gesture of entreaty.
"For God's sake," he said, "don't be offended with me!"
His voice startled me even more than his words; I had never heard
anything like it before. Low, dull, and muffled, it neither rose nor
fell; it spoke slowly and deliberately, without laying the slightest
emphasis on any one of the words that it uttered. In the astonishment of
the moment, I forgot what Cristel had told me. I answered him as I should
have answered any other unknown person who had spoken to me.
"What do you want?"
His hands dropped; his head sunk on his breast. "You are speaking, sir,
to a miserable creature who can't hear you. I am deaf."
I stepped nearer to him, intending to raise my voice in pity for his
infirmity. He shuddered, and signed to me to keep back.
"Don't come close to my ear; don't shout." As he spoke, strong excitement
flashed at me in his eyes, without producing the slightest change in his
voice. "I don't deny," he resumed, "that I can hear sometimes when people
take that way with me. They hurt when they do it. Their voices go through
my nerves as a knife might go through my flesh. I live at the mill, sir;
I have a great favour to ask.
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