ter, Frederick saw the
excellent housekeeper, all muffled up, step from the front door into the
wet, almost deserted street.

After he had made this observation, he became uneasy, lit a cigarette,
screwed his right eye meditatively, and bit his lips. The house was
empty. For that reason his heart was audibly knocking against his ribs.
Again the fantastic incalculableness of life struck him as so remarkable.
An occasion, a condition such as this he had scarcely hoped to reach in
weeks, or even months, certainly not in the wild welter of New York. From
the noise of the steamer and the city, from the rushing and roaring of
the Atlantic Ocean, he was suddenly plunged into the silence of the
grave. It affected him with a sense of desertion and oblivion. In that
city of four million inhabitants, each man was strenuously pursuing his
own affairs, or was harnessed into an iron yoke of duties, which deafened
and blinded him to everything beside the path he had to tread.

Frederick looked at his watch. It was twelve minutes past ten. His
uneasiness increased. He was unable to sit still. Each nerve, each cell
of his body was touched and excited by invisible forces storming upon
him from all sides. A force of this nature, penetrating walls, floors and
ceilings, has been called by various names. We speak of magnetism, of od,
of electricity. As for electricity, Frederick just then had a peculiar
experience of it. He was trying to find composure in front of the open
fireplace; and whenever he touched metal with the tongs, crackling little
sparks shot out. Everything in the room seemed to be charged. If he
merely ran his finger tips lightly over the rug before the hearth, there
were little flashes and reports, like the crack of a tiny whip.

"There they are," he thought, smiling, "the Toilers of the Light." And
while he racked his brain to recall in what book of fairy tales he had
read of those diminutive elves, the dream he had had on the _Roland_
occurred to him. "Toilers of the Light, what are you doing?" he asked
several times, and snatched after the sparks, as one snatches after flies
in a fit of impatience and boredom. It seemed to him that countless
numbers of those little children of Lucifer were pricking his blood like
so many dancing stars. Even the air was filled with stars. They clogged
his breathing. He arose and walked out into the hall.

As he paced up and down there for a while, undecided what to do, making
as little