For a long while he remained where he was on the path of the garden.  The night deepened about him.  A long way off, at the other end of the village, a clock chimed the hours.  In the cottages the lights were extinguished.  The few loungers disappeared from the one long street vanishing over the snow.  And the man never moved.  A numb terror possessed him.  Yet, despite his many faults and his life of evil, he had never been physically a coward.  Always the light shone steadily from the window of his study, making a patch of yellow upon the snow.  Always the occupant of the room must be seated tranquilly there, like an owner.  For no figure had risen, had repassed across the unshuttered space.

The man told himself again and again that he must go forward till he gained the window, that he must at least look into the room; if he dared not enter the house to confront the intruder, to demand an explanation.  But again and again something within him, which seemed to be a voice from the innermost chamber of his soul, whispered to him not to go, whispered to him to leave the intruder alone, to let the intruder do what he would, but not to approach him, above all, not to look upon his face.  And the man obeyed the voice till a thing happened which roused in him a powerful beast, called by many the natural man.

He saw his wife, whom he loved in his way, though he had tricked and deceived her again and again, cross the window space, smiling, and disappear with a downward movement, as the other had disappeared.  Then she rose into his range of vision, and stood for a moment so that he could see her clearly, smiling, talking, making little gestures that he knew, carrying her hand to her face, stretching it out, dropping it.  Finally she lifted it to her lips, half-closing her eyes at the same time, took it away quickly, with a sort of butterfly motion, and vanished, going toward the left, where the room door was.

So had she many and many a time bidden him, her husband, good night.  Instantly, with an impulse which seemed combined of rage and terror, both now full of a driving force which was irresistible, the man sprang forward to the window, seized the stone coping with his hands and stared into his room.

Seated in a round chair at his writing-table, by a lamp with a green shade, was the man who had entered his house.  He was writing busily in a book with a silver clasp that could be locked with a key, and he leaned a little over the table with his head turned away.  The shape of his head, his posture, even the manner in which he used his pen as he traced line after line in the book, made an abominable impression upon the man staring in at the window.  But the face—­the face!  He must see that!  And he leaned forward, trembling, but fiercely, and, pressing his own face against the pane, he looked at the occupant of his room as men look sometimes with their souls.

The man at the table lifted his head.  He laid down the pen, blotted the book in which he had been writing, shut it up, clasped it, locked it with a tiny key, and put it carefully into a drawer of the table, which also he locked.  He got up, stood for an instant by the table with one hand upon it, then turned slowly toward the window, smiling, as men smile to themselves when they are thinking of their own ingenuities.