Much to my delight, though, she didn’t move from where she was, our faces very close. It really wasn’t necessary to speak loudly in order to be heard; we were both whispering, I even more softly than her, because I was doing most of the talking. At times, she would look serious—very serious—even frowning slightly. She eventually grew tired and changed position and place. She walked around to my side of the table and sat down on the couch. I turned and could just see the toes of her slippers, but only for the time it took her to sit down, because her dressing gown was long enough to cover them. I remember that the slippers were black. She said very softly:

“Mama’s room is quite some way away, but she sleeps so very lightly, and if she were to wake up now, it would take her ages to get back to sleep.”

“I’m the same.”

“What?” she asked, leaning forward to hear better.

I went and sat on the chair beside the couch and repeated what I’d said. She laughed at the coincidence of there being three light sleepers in the same house.

“Because I’m just like Mama sometimes: if I do wake in the night, I find it hard to go back to sleep, I toss and turn, get up, light a candle, pace up and down, get into bed again, but it’s no use.”

“Is that what happened tonight?”

“No, not at all,” she said.

I couldn’t understand why she denied this, and perhaps she couldn’t, either. She picked up the two ends of her dressing-gown belt and kept flicking them against her knees, or, rather, against her right knee, because she had crossed her legs. Then she told some story about dreams, and assured me that she had only ever had one nightmare, when she was a child. She asked if I ever had nightmares. The conversation continued in this same slow, leisurely way, and I gave not a thought to the time or to mass. Whenever I finished some anecdote or explanation, she would come up with another question or another subject, and I would again start talking. Now and then she would hush me:

“Ssh! Speak more softly!”