It was not Nora
herself whom I had loved, but Nora as she stood the representative of
my Lady of the Ice. Moreover, I had seen Nora in unfeigned distress; I
had seen her wringing her hands and looking at me with piteous entreaty
and despair; but even the power of these strong emotions had not given
her the face that haunted me. Nora on the ice and Nora at home were so
different, that they could not harmonize; nor could the
never-to-be-forgotten lineaments of the one be traced in the other. And,
could Nora now have been with me in this storm, I doubted whether her
face could again assume that marble, statuesque beauty--that immortal
sadness and despair, which I had once seen upon it. That face--the true
face that I loved--could I ever see it again?

I breasted the storm and walked on I knew not where. At last I found
myself on the Esplanade. Beneath lay the river, which could not now be
seen through the blackness of the storm and of the night, but which,
through that blackness, sent forth a voice from all its waves. And the
wind wailed mournfully, mingling its voice with that of the river. So
once before bad rushing, dashing water joined its uproar to the howl of
pitiless winds, when I bore her over the river; only on that occasion
there was joined in the horrid chorus the more fearful boom of the
breaking icefields.

And now the voice of the river only increased and intensified that
longing of which I have spoken. I could not go home. I thought of going
back again to O'Halloran's house. There was my Lady of the Ice--Nora. I
might see her shadow on the window--I might see a light from her room.

Now Nora had not at all come up to my ideal of the Lady of the Ice, and
yet there was no other representative. I might be mad in love with an
image, a shadow, an idea; but if that image existed anywhere in real
life, it could exist only in Nora. And thus Nora gained from my image
an attractiveness, which she never could have had in her own right. It
was her identity with that haunting image of loveliness that gave her
such a charm. The charm was an imaginary one. Had I never found her on
the river and idealized her, the might have gained my admiration; but
she would never have thrown over me such a spell. But now, whatever she
was in herself, she was so merged in that ideal, that in my longing for
my love I turned my steps backward and wandered toward O'Halloran's,
with the frantic hope of seeing her shadow on the window, or a