what? He was always thinking of the past. He had wandered he knew not
how long, always thinking of that. It was the future he had to consider.
What was to be done?

He had heard of such cases before; he had read of them in newspapers
and talked of them with cold curiosity. But they were of worldly, sinful
people, of dissolute men whose characters he could not conceive--of
silly, vain, frivolous, and abandoned women whom he had never even met.
But Joan--O God! It was the first time since his mute prayer on the
staircase that the Divine name had been wrested from his lips. It came
with his wife's--and his first tears! But the wind swept the one away
and dried the others upon his hot cheeks.

It had ceased to rain, and the wind, which was still high, had shifted
more to the north and was bitterly cold. He could feel the roadway
stiffening under his feet. When he reached the pavement of the outskirts
once more he was obliged to take the middle of the street, to avoid the
treacherous films of ice that were beginning to glaze the sidewalks. Yet
this very inclemency, added to the usual Sabbath seclusion, had left the
streets deserted. He was obliged to proceed more slowly, but he met no
one and could pursue his bewildering thoughts unchecked. As he passed
between the lines of cold, colorless houses, from which all light and
life had vanished, it seemed to him that their occupants were dead
as his love, or had fled their ruined houses as he had. Why should he
remain? Yet what was his duty now as a man--as a Christian? His eye fell
on the hideous facade of the church he was passing--her church! He gave
a bitter laugh and stumbled on again.

With one of the gusts he fancied he heard a familiar sound--the rattling
of buggy wheels over the stiffening road. Or was it merely the fanciful