me tremendously acute. The early dusk
of the last half of November had gathered thick, but the evening was
fine and the lighted streets had the animation and variety of a winter
that had begun with brilliancy. The shop-fronts glowed through frosty
panes, the passers bustled on the pavement, the bells of the street-cars
jangled in the cold air, the newsboys hawked the evening papers, the
vestibules of the theatres, illuminated and flanked with coloured
posters and the photographs of actresses, exhibited seductively their
swinging doors of red leather or baize, spotted with little brass nails.
Behind great plates of glass the interior of the hotels became visible,
with marble-paved lobbies, white with electric lamps, and columns, and
Westerners on divans stretching their legs, while behind a counter, set
apart and covered with an array of periodicals and novels in paper
covers, little boys, with the faces of old men, showing plans of the
play-houses and offering librettos, sold orchestra-chairs at a premium.
When from time to time Ransom paused at a corner, hesitating which way
to drift, he looked up and saw the stars, sharp and near, scintillating
over the town. Boston seemed to him big and full of nocturnal life, very
much awake and preparing for an evening of pleasure.

He passed and repassed the Music Hall, saw Verena immensely advertised,
gazed down the vista, the approach for pedestrians, which leads out of
School Street, and thought it looked expectant and ominous. People had
not begun to enter yet, but the place was ready, lighted and open, and
the interval would be only too short. So it appeared to Ransom, while at
the same time he wished immensely the crisis were over. Everything that
surrounded him referred itself to the idea with which his mind was
palpitating, the question whether he might not still intervene as
against the girl's jump into the abyss. He believed that all Boston was
going to hear her, or that at least every one was whom he saw in the
streets; and there was a kind of incentive and inspiration in this
thought. The vision of wresting her from the mighty multitude set him
off again, to stride through the population that would fight for her. It
was not too late, for he felt strong; it would not be too late even if
she should already stand there before thousands of converging eyes. He
had had his ticket since the morning, and now the time was going on. He
went back to his hotel at last for ten minut