as ever, but,

"A joy has taken flight."

The pleasant sensation of solitude, which I could so easily have felt
among a thousand people had he not been counted among them, was gone.
The roll of my skates upon the ice had lost its music for me; the wind
felt colder--I sadder. At least I thought so. Should I go away again now
that this disturbing element had appeared upon the scene? No, no, no,
said something eagerly within me, and I bit my lip, and choked back a
kind of sob of disgust as I realized that despite my gloomy reflections
my heart was beating a high, rapid march of--joy! as I skimmed, all
alone, far away from the crowd, among the dismal withered reeds, and
round the little islets of stiffened grass and rushes which were frozen
upright in their places.

The daylight faded, and the moon rose. The people were going away. The
distant buzz of laughter had grown silent. I could dimly discern some
few groups, but very few, still left, and one or two solitary figures.
Even my preternatural eagerness could not discern who they were! The
darkness, the long walk home, the probe at seven, which I should be too
tired to attend, all had quite slipped from my mind; it was possible
that among those figures which I still dimly saw, was yet remaining that
of Courvoisier, and surely there was no harm in my staying here.

I struck out in another direction, and flew on in the keen air; the
frosty moon shedding a weird light upon the black ice; I saw the railway
lines, polished, gleaming too in the light; the belt of dark firs to my
right; the red sand soil frozen hard and silvered over with frost. Flat
and tame, but still beautiful. I felt a kind of rejoicing in it; I felt
it home. I was probably the first person who had been there since the
freezing of the mere, thought I, and that idea was soon converted to a
certainty in my mind, for in a second my rapid career was interrupted.
At the furthest point from help or human presence the ice gave way with
a crash, and I shrieked aloud at the shock of the bitter water. Oh, how
cold it was! how piercing, frightful, numbing! It was not deep--scarcely
above my knees, but the difficulty was how to get out. Put my hand where
I would the ice gave way. I could only plunge in the icy water, feeling
the sodden grass under my feet. What sort of things might there not be
in that water? A cold shudder, worse than any ice, shot through me at
the idea of newts and rats and water-serpents, a