COMPANION.--A TERRIBLE WALK.--FAMILIAR
VOICES.--SINKING INTO SENSELESSNESS.--THE LADY OF THE ICE IS REVEALED
AT LAST AMID THE STORM!

As I left the house there came a blast of stinging sleet, which showed
me that it was a wild night. It was not many days now since that
memorable journey on the river; and the storm that was blowing seemed
to be the counterpart and continuation of that. It had been overcast
when I entered O'Halloran's; when I left it, the storm had gathered up
into fury, and the wind howled around, and the furious sleet dashed
itself fiercely against me. The street was deserted. None would go out
on so wild a night. It was after eleven; half-past, perhaps.

For a moment I turned my back to the sleet, and then drew forth my
cloud from my pocket, and bound it about my head.

Thus prepared, and thus armed, I was ready to encounter the fiercest
sleet that ever blew. I went down the steps, took the sidewalk, and
went off.

As I went on, my mind was filled with many thoughts. A duel was before
me; but I gave that no consideration. The storm howled about and
shrieked between the houses; but the storm was nothing. There was that
in my heart and in my brain which made all these things trivial. It was
the image of my Lady of the Ice, and the great longing after her,
which, for the past few days, had steadily increased.

I had found her! I had lost her! Lost and found! Found and lost!

The wrath of the storm had only this one effect on me, that it brought
before me with greater vividness the events of that memorable day on
the river. Through such a storm we had forced our way. From such
pitiless peltings of stinging sleet I had sheltered her fainting,
drooping head. This was the hurricane that had howled about her as she
lay prostrate, upheld in my arms, which hurled its wrathful showers on
her white, upturned face. From this I had saved her, and from worse--
from the grinding ice, the falling avalanche, the dark, deep, cold,
freezing flood. I had brought her back to life through all these
perils, and now--and now!--

Now, for that Lady of the Ice, whose image was brought up before me by
the tempest and the storm, there arose within me a mighty and
irrepressible yearning. She had become identified with Nora, but yet it
was not Nora's face and Nora's image that dwelt within my mind. That
smiling face, with its sparkling eyes and its witching smile, was
another thing, and seemed to belong to another person.