of her kind. But for a long time
she sought the house in vain; she could not reach it; the avenue seemed
interminable to her feet returning. At last she was again upon the
lawn, but neither man nor woman was there; and in the house only a
light here and there was burning. Every guest was gone. She entered,
and the servants, soft-footed and silent, were busy carrying away the
vessels of hospitality, and restoring order, as if already they
prepared for another company on the morrow. No one heeded her. She was
out of place, and much unwelcome. She hastened to the door of entrance,
for every moment there was a misery. She reached the hall. A strange,
shadowy porter opened to her, and she stepped out into a wide street.

That, too, was silent. No carriage rolled along the center, no
footfarer walked on the side. Not a light shone from window or door,
save what they gave back of the yellow light of the moon. She was
lost--lost utterly, with an eternal loss. She knew nothing of the
place, had nowhere to go, nowhere she wanted to go, had not a thought
to tell her what question to ask, if she met a living soul. But living
soul there could be none to meet. She had nor home, nor direction, nor
desire; she knew of nothing that she had lost, nor of anything she
wished to gain; she had nothing left but the sense that she was empty,
that she needed some goal, and had none. She sat down upon a stone
between the wide street and the wide pavement, and saw the moon shining
gray upon the stone houses. It was all deadness.

Presently, from somewhere in the moonlight, appeared, walking up to
her, where she sat in eternal listlessness, the one only brother she
had ever had. She had lost him years and years before, and now she saw
him; he was there, and she knew him. But not a throb went through her
heart. He came to her side, and she gave him no greeting. "Why should I
heed him?" she said to herself. "He is dead. I am only in a dream. This
is not he; it is but his pitiful phantom that comes wandering hither--a
ghost without a heart, made out of the moonlight. It is nothing. I am
nothing. I am lost. Everything is an empty dream of loss. I know it,
and there is no waking. If there were, surely the sight of him would
give me some shimmer of delight. The old time was but a thicker dream,
and this is truer because more shadowy." And, the form still standing
by her, she felt it was ages away; she was divided from it by a gulf of
very nothingness.