He gave himself up to it, unresistingly,
allowed himself to toy with it, to sink beneath it. Just, however, as
he was sinking, sinking, he was roused, suddenly, as from sleep, by the
vivid presentiment that something was about to happen to him: it seemed
as if an important event were looming in the near distance, ready to
burst in upon his life, and not only instantly, but with a monstrous
crash of sound. His pulses beat more quickly, his nerves stretched,
like bows. But it was very still; everything around him slept, and the
streets were deserted.

A keen sense of desolation came over him; never, in his life, had he
felt so utterly alone. In all this great city that spread, ocean-like,
around him, not a heart was the lighter for his being there. Oh, to
have some one beside him!--some one who would talk soothingly to him,
of shadowy, far-off things, or, still better, be merely a sympathetic
presence. He passed rapidly in review people he had known, saw their
faces and heard their voices, but not one of them would do. No, he
wanted a friend, the friend he had often dreamed of, whose thoughts
would be his thoughts, with whom there would be no need of speech. Then
his longing swelled, grew fiercer and more undefined, and a sudden
burst of energy convulsed him and struggled to find vent. His breath
came hard, and he stretched his arms out into the night, uncertainly,
as if to grasp something he did not see; but they fell to his side
again. He would have liked to sweep through the air, to feel the wind
rushing dizzily through him; or to be set down before some feat that
demanded the strength of a Titan--anything, no matter what, to be rid
of the fever in his veins. But it beset him, again and again, only by
slow degrees weakening and dying away.

A bitter moisture sprang to his eyes. Leaning his head on his arms, he
endeavoured to call up her face. But it was of no use, though he
strained every nerve; for some time he could see only the rose that had
lain beside her on the piano, and in the troubled image that at last
crowned his patience, her eyes looked out, like jewels, from a setting
of golden petals.

Lying wakeful in the darkness, he saw them more clearly. Now, though,
they had a bluish light, were like moons, moons that burnt. If he lit
the lamp and tried to read, they got between him and the book, and
danced up and down the pages, with jerky, clockwork movements, like
stage fireflies. He put the light out, and la