ime pass the figure on the steps. I sat there in
agony, and against my will gazed into the little fountain, though the
eternal tossing of its little ball and its splashing were a torture to
me. So I was a captive. Had she come in, she would have seen me
prostrate at her feet, and that was my sole desire.

Against what, then, was I struggling? Does one struggle against love?
Is not that insanity?

When my time was up, I forced myself to arise, and stepped out, in deep
shame and anxiety. She was no longer there. I stared in amazement at
the spot where she had sat and hastened despairingly for home.

The evening passed and my work with it. The boys went to bed, Donna
Leocadia disappeared in her quarters, her bolt snapped like a gun-shot
into its socket, and I did not even smile. Voices could still be heard
coming from the bedroom, and I did not call for silence.

I was as wide-awake as I had hardly been in the morning; to what end
should I lie down to rest? After I had turned out the light, I seated
myself in the large reading room--its windows and door opening on the
courtyard had not been closed--on a little school bench, and abandoned
myself to my thoughts.

Where was I? Was I sitting here, watching the first moonbeam glide
across the floor? Was I roaming in the park? Was I loitering about the
city? Was my heart beating within me, so gently? Was it not beating
from some place far distant in the abyss of time? Was there not in my
breast a yearning emptiness, a painfully anxious void? Oh--I had
fancied that Mara was holding out her hand for my heart, and I must
keep it: was it not in fact lying in the hollow of her hand,
unsubstantial, a shade, a particle of dust? The wind may have blown it
away and dissipated it.--

And where is she? Where must I now seek her, now that I cannot dream of
her?

In a broad stream the moonlight came through the windows and drove the
shadows of the table and chairs slowly and noiselessly through the
room. Little mice darted out of the crevices and around in the light
and the shadow under the table, looking for crumbs; their coats
glistened often like soft silk, and their little eyes gleamed like
black diamonds. They scampered helter-skelter, they squeaked, they sat
upon their hind legs, and feasted merrily. Suddenly they scattered and
disappeared. In from the courtyard came rushing a great rat with a
great pattering of his claws on the floor; he dragged his tail behind
him as though