“‘The devil!  Why don’t you shut the window!’ I cried, springing up from the sofa.

“‘Spare your energy, it’s too late,’ said Lucien with a gentle mockery in his soft voice.  ’Look there!’—­he pointed out into the street, where his sheets of paper went swirling about in the heavy air like white doves.

“A second later came the rain, a veritable cloud-burst.  We shut the windows and gave ourselves up to melancholy thoughts about the lost manuscript, the recovery of which now seemed utterly hopeless.

“’That’s one thousand francs, at least, that the wind has robbed me of,’ sighed Lucien.  ’Well, elfin, that doesn’t matter so much.  But do you know anything more tiresome than to work over the same subject a second time?  I can’t think of doing it.  It would fairly make me sick to try it.’

“We were in a sad mood that morning.  When we went out to breakfast at about two o’clock, we looked about for some traces of the lost manuscript.

“There was nothing to be seen.  It had vanished completely, whirled off to all four corners of the earth probably, this manuscript from which Lucien had expected so much.  Truly it was ‘The Force of the Wind.’”

* * * * *

“Now comes the strange part of the story.  One morning, two weeks later, Lucien stood in the door of my little room, pale as a ghost.  He had a bundle of printer’s proofs in his hand, and held them out to me without a word.

“I looked at it and read: 

“‘"The Force of the Wind,” by Lucien F.’

“It was a good bundle of proofs, the entire first proofs of Lucien’s novel, that novel the manuscript of which we had seen blown out of the balcony window and whirled away by the winds.

“‘My dear man,’ I exclaimed, as I handed him back the proofs.  ’You have been industrious indeed, to write your entire novel over again in so short a time—­and to have proofs already——­’

“Lucien did not answer.  He stood silent, staring at me with a weird look in his otherwise so sensible eyes.  After a moment he stammered: 

“’I did not write the novel over again.  I have not touched a pen since the day the manuscript blew out of the window.’

“‘Are you a sleep-walker, Lucien?’

“‘Why do you ask?’

“’Why, that would be the only natural explanation.  They say we can do a great many things in sleep, of which we know nothing when we wake.  I’ve heard queer stories of that.  Men have committed murders in their sleep.  It happens quite often that sleep-walkers write letters in a handwriting they do not recognize when awake.’

“‘I have never been a sleep-walker,’ answered Lucien.

“‘Oh, you never can tell,’ I remarked.  ’Would you rather explain it as magic?  Or as the work of fairies?  Or do you believe in ghosts?  Your muse has fascinated you, you mystic!’ And I laughed and trilled a line from ‘The Mascot,’ which we had seen the evening before at the Lyric.