telegraphed--and my box at the club was choked with their letters.
But I did not open a single one of them, though I found a pleasure
in turning them over and over, and wondering as to what was within
them. There were several in Teresa's fine hand, and these
interested me most of all and tantalised me unspeakably. There was
one of hers, cunningly addressed to me in a stranger's writing
that I opened inadvertently; but I at once perceived the trick and
had the strength of mind to throw it in the fire unread.

Perhaps you will wonder at my childishness. Sometimes I wondered
at it myself. But the wound still smarted, and something stronger
than I seemed to withhold me from again breaking the ice. Besides,
those long lonely days, and those nights, almost as long in the
retrospect, when I lay sleepless on my bed, had shown me I had
been drifting into another peril no less dangerous than
dependence. I had been thinking too much of the girl for my own
good, and our separation had brought me to a sudden realisation of
how deeply I was beginning to care for her. I hated her, too, the
pitiless wretch, so there was a double reason for me not to go
back.

One night as I had dressed to dine out and stepped into the
street, looking up at the snow that hid the stars and silenced
one's footsteps on the pavement, a woman emerged from the gloom,
and before I knew what she was doing, had caught my arm. I shook
her off, thinking her a beggar or something worse, and would have
passed on my way had she not again struggled to detain me. I
stopped, and was on the point of roughly ordering her to let me
go, when I looked down into her veiled face and saw that it was
Teresa Grossensteck.