I sat
in my open window. I was thus sitting one night--a memorable one to
me--when I heard a sharp exclamation from below, in a voice I had long
listened for.

Any utterance from those lips would have attracted my attention; but,
filled as this was with marked, if not extraordinary, emotion, I
could not fail to be roused to a corresponding degree of curiosity and
interest.

Thrusting out my head, I cast a rapid glance downward. A shutter
swinging in the wind, and the escaping figure of a man hurrying round
the corner of the street, were all that rewarded my scrutiny; though,
from the stream of light issuing from the casement beneath, I perceived
that her window, like my own, was wide open.

As I continued to watch this light, I saw her thrust out her head with
an eagerness indicative of great excitement. Peering to right and left,
she murmured some suppressed words mixed with gasps of such strong
feeling that I involuntarily called out:

"Excuse me, madam, have you been frightened in any way by the man I saw
running away from here a moment ago?"

She gave a great start and glanced up. I see her face yet--beautiful,
wonderful; so beautiful and so wonderful I have never been able to
forget it. Meeting my eye, she faltered out:

"Did you see a man running away from here? Oh, sir, if I might have a
word with you!"

I came near leaping directly to the pavement in my ardor and anxiety to
oblige her, but, remembering before it was too late that she was neither
a Juliet nor I a Romeo, I merely answered that I would be with her in a
moment and betook myself below by the less direct but safer means of the
staircase.

It was a short one and I was but a moment in descending, but that moment
was long enough for my heart to acquire a most uncomfortable throb,
and it was with anything but an air of quiet self-possession that I
approached the threshold I had never before dared to cross even in
fancy.

The door was open and I caught one glimpse of her figure before she was
aware of my presence. She was contemplating her right hand with a look
of terror, which, added to her striking personality, made her seem at
the instant a creature of alarming characteristics fully as capable of
awakening awe as devotion.

I may have given some token of the agitation her appearance awakened,
for she turned towards me with sudden vehemence.

"Oh!" she cried, with a welcoming gesture; "you are the gentleman from
up-stairs who saw a man r