him and empty. Emptiness
occupied that part of space beyond the window, for the rosy cloud
which had passed there a while before had vanished. The figure of
Darvid standing at the window became darker in that gloom, which,
growing denser, dimmed and then concealed the white, the blue,
and the gilding of the great drawing-room. By degrees the lines
of his face became invisible; his trembling hands and the quiver
of the skin on his cheeks were no longer to be distinguished, and
Darvid appeared on the gray background of the window as a narrow
and perfectly black line. He did not go away, for he was riveted
there, fixed in thought, filled with amazement. In this way, in
this manner then, all things on earth are ended. Those invisible
giants, Death, Insanity, Anguish, Rage, go about the world
trampling, crushing, rending, and no man has power to arrest
them! He had never thought about those giants. How could he? Was
he a philosopher? He had not had time to think. Now he was
thinking, and at the bottom of his stony meditation he beholds a
pale, dreadful visage. Something which recalls a Medusa-head,
which he had seen some time in a picture. It has struggled out of
raging waves, and is resting on them face upward; its hair is
torn; its gaze has endless depth; and on its blue lips is a
jeering smile. What is it jeering at? Perhaps at the grandeur of
the man who appears as a narrow line on the gray background of
that window, black, and alone as he is, in the gathering gloom
and the silence?

Now something soft and timid touches his feet, and he sees a
little dark point moving. He stoops and calls:

"Puffie!"

At the floor was heard thin barking. Puffie had always barked
that way to call the attention of his mistress.

Darvid bent low with his hand on the silky coat, and repeated:

"Puffie!"

Then he straightened himself, and, leaving the window, called
several times in succession:

"Puffie! Puffie!"

The black line moved on, in the gray darkness, through two
drawing-rooms, and behind it, on the floor, rolled the dark small
ball-like object, till a space of bright light gleamed before
them. This was the widely open door of his clearly lighted study.

In the door the footman pronounced loudly a name, at the sound of
which Darvid's step quickened. At last the man had returned--the
envoy, the agent, the hound had come hack! Beyond doubt he brings
favoring news, otherwise he would have no cause to come. Hence,
that col