And she created an imaginary experience for herself almost unknowingly.

It was, in fact, the inevitable result of a mind overcharged and excited by fables; it was increased by her ignorance of the life within and about her, as well as from her loneliness.

She had not had many companions, so all desires went from her only to return to her.
Sometimes she was in such a peculiar state that she would put her hands over her face, as if doubting her own identity.

Was she herself only an illusion, and would she suddenly disappear some day and vanish into nothingness?
Who would tell her the truth?
One evening in the following May, on this same balcony where she had spent so much time in vague dreams, she suddenly broke into tears.
She was not low-spirited in the least, but it seemed to her as if her anxiety arose from a vain expectation of a visit from someone.

Yet who was there to come?
It was very dark; the Clos-Marie marked itself out like a great black spot under the sky filled with stars, and she could but vaguely distinguish the heavy masses of the old elm-trees of the Bishop's garden, and of the park of the Hotel Voincourt.