He sat listening to me with a grave intensity of expression, which at first I hardly knew how to interpret.  Now and then I saw his lips quivering, and as I described the little scene with the child in the park, he rose abruptly and began to walk up and down on the floor.  As I had finished, he again dropped down into the chair, raised his eyes devoutly to the ceiling, and murmured: 

“Thank God!”

Thus he sat for a long while, sometimes moving his lips inaudibly, and seemingly unconscious of my presence.  Then suddenly he sprang up and seized his hat and cane.

“It was number 532?” he said, laying hold of the door-knob.

“Yes,” I answered, “but you surely do not intend to see her to-night.”

“Yes, I do.”

“But it is after nine o’clock, and she may—­”

But he was already half way down the stairs.

Through a dense, drizzling rain which made the gas-lights across the street look like moons set in misty aureoles, Storm hastened on until he reached the unaristocratic locality of Emily’s dwelling.  He rang the door-bell, and after some slight expostulation with the servant was permitted to enter.  Groping his way through a long, dimly-lit hall, he stumbled upon a staircase, which he mounted, and paused at the door which had been pointed out to him.  A slender ray of light stole out through the key-hole, piercing the darkness without dispelling it.  Storm hesitated long at the door before making up his mind to knock; a strange quivering agitation had come upon him, as if he were about to do something wrong.  All sorts of wild imaginings rushed in upon him, and in his effort to rid himself of them he made an unconscious gesture, and seized hold of the door-knob.  A hasty fluttering motion was heard from within, and presently the door was opened.  A fair and slender lady with a sweet pale face stood before him; in one hand she held a needle, and in the other a bright-colored garment which resembled a baby’s jacket.  He felt rather than saw that he was in Emily’s presence.  His head and his heart seemed equally turbulent.  A hundred memories from the buried past rose dimly into sight, and he could not chase them away.  It was so difficult, too, to identify this grave and worn, though still young face, with that soft, dimpled, kitten-like Emily, who had conquered his youth and made his life hers.  Ah! poor little dimpled Emily; yes, he feared she would never return to him.  And he sighed at the thought that she had probably lost now all that charming naughtiness which he had once spent so much time in disapproving of.  He was suddenly roused from these reflections by a vague, half-whispered cry; Emily had fled to the other end of the room, thrown herself on the bed, and pressed her face hard down among the pillows.  It was an act which immediately recalled the Emily of former days, a childish, and still natural motion like that of some shy and foolish animal which believes itself safe when its head is hidden.  Storm closed the door, walked up to the bed, and seated himself on a hard, wooden chair.