sensitiveness, her wit: they combined to make the thought of her, to him,
at least, at once terrible and a delight. Remembering that once he had
held her in his arms, had gazed into her starlit eyes, and inhaled the
impalpable fragrance of her, he trembled, was both glad and afraid.

And her ways so hedged about with perils! While he must stand aside,
impotent, a pillar of the social order secure in its shelter, and see her
hounded and driven by the forces of the Law, harried and worried like
an unclean thing, forced, as it might be, to resort to stratagems and
expedients unthinkable, to preserve her liberty....

It was altogether intolerable. He could not stand it. And yet--it was
written that their paths had crossed and parted and were never again to
touch. Or was it?... It must be so written: they would never meet again.
After all, her concern with, her interest in, him, could have been nothing
permanent. They had encountered under strange auspices, and he had treated
her with common decency, for which she had repaid him in good measure by
permitting him to retain his own property. Their account was even, and
she for ever done with him. That must be her attitude. Why should it be
anything else?

"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed the young man in disgust. And rising, took his
distemper to the window.

Leaning on the sill, he thrust head and shoulders far out over the garish
abyss of metropolitan night. The hot breath of the city fanned up in
stifling waves into his face, from the street below, upon whose painted
pavements men crawled like insects--round moving spots, to each his romance
under his hat.