the miner washes away the earth to bring
to light the grain of gold in his pan. He must have scanned a million
women's faces in that weary search, and the bitterness of that
million-fold disappointment left its trace in a feeling of aversion
for the feminine countenance and figure that he was long in
overcoming.

Knowing that only by some desperate chance he could hope to meet her
in his random wanderings, it seemed to him that he was more likely to
be successful by resigning as far as possible all volition, and
leaving the guidance of the search to chance; as if fortune were best
disposed toward those who most entirely abdicated intelligence and
trusted themselves to her. He sacredly followed every impulse, never
making up his mind an hour before at what station he should leave the
cars, and turning to the right or left in his wanderings through the
streets of cities, as much as possible without intellectual choice.
Sometimes, waking suddenly in the middle of the night, he would rise,
dress with eager haste, and sally out to wander through the dark
streets, thinking he might be led of Providence to meet her. And once
out, nothing but utter exhaustion could drive him back; for, how
could he tell but in the moment after he had gone she might pass.
He had recourse to every superstition of sortilege, clairvoyance,
presentiment, and dreams. And all the time his desperation was
singularly akin to hope. He dared revile no seeming failure, not
knowing but just that was the necessary link in the chain of accidents
destined to bring him face to face with her. The darkest hour might
usher in the sunburst. The possibility that this was at last the
blessed chance lit up his eyes ten thousand times as they fell on some
new face.

But at last he found himself back in Bonn, with the feverish
infatuation of the gambler which had succeeded hope in his mind,
succeeded in turn by utter despair! His sole occupation now was
revisiting the spots which he had frequented with her in that happy
year. As one who has lost a princely fortune sits down at length to
enumerate the little items of property that happen to be attached to
his person, disregarded before but now his all, so Randall counted up
like a miser the little store of memories that were thenceforth to be
his all. Wonderfully the smallest details of those days came back to
him. The very seats they sat in at public places, the shops they
entered together, their promenades and the p