Nature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next,
leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the
opposite direction, where a portly female considerably in the wane of
life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church.
She has the placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either
died away or have become so essential to her heart that they would be
poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the lean man and well-conditioned
woman are passing a slight obstruction occurs and brings these two
figures directly in contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the
crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder; they stand face to face,
staring into each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation thus
Wakefield meets his wife. The throng eddies away and carries them
asunder. The sober widow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to
church, but pauses in the portal and throws a perplexed glance along
the street. She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she
goes.

And the man? With so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands
to gaze after him he hurries to his lodgings, bolts the door and
throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break out;
his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the
miserable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance, and
he cries out passionately, "Wakefield, Wakefield! You are mad!"
Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so
moulded him to itself that, considered in regard to his
fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to
possess his right mind. He had contrived--or, rather, he had
happened--to dissever himself from the world, to vanish, to give up
his place and privileges with living men without being admitted among
the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in