ray of
light from her room. For I could find no other way than this of
satisfying those insatiable longings that had sprung up within me.

So back I went through the storm, which seemed still to increase in
fury, and through the sleet, which swept in long horizontal lines down
the street, and whirled round the corner, and froze fast to the houses.
As I went on, the violence of the storm did not at all weaken my
purpose. I had my one idea, and that one idea I was bent on carrying
out.

Under such circumstances I approached the house of O'Halloran. I don't
know what I expected, or whether I expected, any thing or not. I know
what I wanted. I wanted the Lady of the Ice, and in search of her I ha
thus wandered back to that house in which lived the one with whom she
had been identified. A vague idea of seeing her shadow on the window
still possessed me, and so I kept along on the opposite sidewalk, and
looked up to see if there was any light or any shadow.

There was no light at all.

I stood still and gazed.

Was there a shadow? Or what was it? There was something moving there--a
dark, dusky shadow, in a niche of the gateway, by the corner of the
house--a dark shadow, dimly revealed in this gloom--the shadowy outline
of a woman's form.

I do not know what mad idea possessed me. I looked, while my heart beat
fast and painfully. A wild idea of the Lady of the Ice coming to me
again, amid the storm, to be again my companion through the storm,
flashed like lightning through my brain.

Suddenly, wild and clear and clanging, there came the toll of a bell
from a neighboring tower, as it began to strike the hour of midnight.
For a moment I paused in a sort of superstitious terror, and then,
before the third stroke had rung out, I rushed across the street.

The figure had been watching me.

As I came, she started. She hurried forward, and met me at the curb.
With a wild rush of joy and exultation, I caught her in my arms. I felt
her frame tremble. At length she disengaged herself and caught my arm
with a convulsive clasp, and drew me away. Mechanically, and with no
fixed idea of any kind, I walked off.

She walked slowly. In that fierce gale, rapid progress was not
possible. She, however, was well protected from the blast. A cloud was
wrapped around her head, and kept her face from the storm.

We walked on, and I felt my heart throb to suffocation, while my brain
reeled with a thousand new and wild fancies. Amid thes