beside her in the gutter, and the cold water enters my boots.

And that evening, inflated by mad longing, I am so triumphantly
confident that I do not even remember to shake her hand. By her door I
said to her, "To-morrow," and she answered, "Yes."

On one of the days which followed, finding myself free in the
afternoon, I made my way to the great populous building of flats where
she lives. I ascended two dark flights of steps, closely encaged, and
followed a long elbowed corridor. Here it is. I knock and enter.
Complete silence greets me. There is no one, and acute disappointment
runs through me.

I take some hesitant steps in the tiny vestibule, which is lighted by
the glass door to the kitchen, wherein I hear the drip of water. I see
a room whose curtains invest it with broidered light. There is a bed
in it, with a cover of sky-blue satinette shining like the blue of a
chromo. It is Marie's room! Her gray silk hat, rose-trimmed, hangs
from a nail on the flowery paper. She has not worn it since my aunt's
death; and alongside hang black dresses. I enter this bright blue
sanctuary, inhabited only by a cold and snow-like light, and orderly
and chaste as a picture.

My hand goes out like a thief's. I touch, I stroke these dresses,
which are wont to touch Marie. I turn again to the blue-veiled bed.
On a whatnot there are books, and their titles invite me; for where her
thoughts dwell, the things which occupy her mind--but I leave them. I
would rather go near her bed. With a movement at once mad, frightened
and trembling, I lift the quilts that clothe it and my gaze enters it,
and my knees lean trembling on the edge of this great lifeless thing,