But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his path on this eventful night.  He had hardly taken two steps out of his covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully affected him.

And yet, it was a woman—­young by her step, light and quick as the antelope’s, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded.  She enchanted by the mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher.  In one hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant’s coffin.

Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on apace.

Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants.  He was clad without any attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity.  Under the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight but manly form.  His hair, black as the raven’s wing, was worn long and came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.  But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors.  His attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection.  The young woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he felt sure that she was not offended.

He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter, he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child’s casket, was a violin-case.  The girl—­she was perhaps but sixteen—­had the artist’s eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the traditional flaxen.  Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared, with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up and expanded his heart—­devoid of such a mastering emotion before.  He believed this was love!  Perhaps it was love—­real, true, indubitable love—­but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in vain.