because he knew the last would bring
him to her arms.

In the midst of the bitterest grief and regret, his mind suddenly grew
strangely clear and calm. For the strength of a noble love that really
fills a man's heart, is such, that in its glorious fervor it consumes
all other feelings, and even in the denial of the beloved object, the
renunciation of the joy of her presence and reciprocating love, renders
him happy whose being it pervades. All the happiness Edwin had enjoyed
during these four years of quiet possession, seemed like a pale
twilight in comparison with the radiant brightness that suddenly burst
upon him in this separation. For the first time, the inmost depths of
his being were pervaded by the feeling that he would give the whole
world to call this woman his again.

With the rapturous timidity of a young man in love, but far distant
from the object of his longing, and who meantime indemnifies himself
for all deprivations by the boldness of his waking dreams, he conjured
up the image of his beloved wife and murmured confusedly a thousand
happy, sweet, and sorrowful words. He sued for her heart as if she had
never granted him a kind word, and in imagination whispered his
yearning love in her ear and waited with a throbbing heart for some
sound from her lips that might seem to favor his suit. Her little work
basket stood on the table before the sofa, where he still lay in the
dark. Just as she had toyed with his book, his pen, he now took up one
after another, the skeins of silk, silver thimble, and little scissors;
the thimble he put on and pressed to his lips. It was such a
consolation to him to be permitted to touch the things that had
belonged to her, as if they were hostages she would ransom when he had
her again. "To Berlin," he said suddenly to himself. "Why should we not
go there?" He said "we," as if they were to set out on their journey
the next morning together. For the moment he had entirely forgotten
that she was not sitting beside him.

So he lay in his dark corner in a condition between sleeping and
waking, while visions of all his past and future happiness successively
rose before him. He was so absorbed in his reverie that he did not hear
the noise in the street outside, a strange humming and buzzing, as if a
great crowd had assembled, but were moving gently about with subdued
voices and light steps, in order not to betray some secret design. It
was about nine o'clock, an hour at which such