everything to everybody assembled. I determined to walk about in the
neighbourhood of the house, until twelve o'clock; and then to go into
the hall, and send up my card to Mr. Mannion, with a message on it,
intimating that I was waiting below to accompany him to North Villa
with Margaret.

I crossed the street, and looked up again at the house from the
pavement opposite. Then lingered a little, listening to the music as
it reached me through the windows, and imagining to myself Margaret's
occupation at that moment. After this, I turned away; and set forth
eastward on my walk, careless in which direction I traced my steps.

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than
two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again. Until then, the
present had no existence for me--I lived in the past and future. I
wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded
thoroughfares. Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great
city, not one attracted my notice. Uninformed and unobservant, neither
saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of
London. All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own
thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved
through my bridal dream. Where was my world, at that moment? Narrowed
to the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow.
Where were the beings in the world? All merged in one--Margaret.

Sometimes, my thoughts glided back, dreamily and voluptuously, to the
day when I first met her. Sometimes, I recalled the summer evenings
when we sat and read together out of the same book; and, once more, it
was as if I breathed with the breath, and hoped with the hopes, and
longed with the old longings of those days. But oftenest it was with