Thus ran his fancies day by day,
and the night only lent a deeper intensity to the
yearnings of the day. He walked about as in a
dream, seeing nothing, heeding nothing, while
this one strong desire--to see Edith once more
--throbbed and throbbed with a slow, feverish
perseverance within him. Edith--Edith, the
very name had a strange, potent fascination.
Every thought whispered "Edith,"--his pulse
beat "Edith,"--and his heart repeated the
beloved name. It was his pulse-beat,--his
heartbeat,--his life-beat.
And one morning as he stood absently
looking at his fingers against the light--and they
seemed strangely wan and transparent--the
thought at last took shape. It rushed upon
him with such vehemence, that he could no more
resist it. So he bade the clergyman good-bye,
gathered his few worldly goods together and
set out for Bergen. There he found an English
steamer which carried him to Hull, and a few
weeks later, he was once more in New York.
It was late one evening in January that a
tug-boat arrived and took the cabin passengers
ashore. The moon sailed tranquilly over the
deep blue dome of the sky, the stars traced their
glittering paths of light from the zenith downward,
and it was sharp, bitter cold. Northward
over the river lay a great bank of cloud, dense,
gray and massive, the spectre of the coming
snow-storm. There it lay so huge and fantastically
human, ruffling itself up, as fowls do, in
defense against the cold. Halfdan walked on
at a brisk rate--strange to say, all the street-
cars he met went the wrong way--startling
every now and then some precious memory, some
word or look or gesture of Edith's which had
hovered long over those scenes, waiting for his
recognition.
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