The hours dragged so heavily that by ten o’clock he put on his overcoat and snow-shoes and went out again into the street.  He was possessed at the moment by a growing fear of missing Connie, and as he walked toward the opera house he had sense of a premonition almost occult in power that the terrible destiny which had her in its clutch was gathering energy for some pitiless catastrophe With characteristic patience he searched his own conscience, the incidents of his daily life, and held himself rather than his wife to account.  After all, he was the stronger of the two, and yet when had he put forth his strength or his pity on her behalf?  In the closer human relations mere indifference showed suddenly as sin, and the sluggish spirit which had controlled his married life appeared in his memory as a form of moral apathy.  Was a human soul so small a thing that it could perish at his side and he be none the Wiser?  What was his boasted intellect worth if it could paralyse the human part of him and exhaust the fount of his compassion?  In his widening vision he saw that in the spirit of things humanity is one and indivisible, a single organism held together by a common pulse of life.  To live or to die apart he realised, is beyond the scope of an individual destiny, for in the eye of God each man that lives is the keeper not of his own but of his brother’s soul.

The self reproach which moved in his heart impelled him so rapidly upon his way that when he reached the doors he had still an hour to wait before the opera ended.  Remembering that if he were so fortunate to find Connie he must take her home, he went to a livery stable for a carriage, and then coming back, walked nervously up and down upon the frozen pavement.  His mind was divided between the fear that she might leave by another entrance—­that he might miss her altogether—­and the more horrible dread that in seeing her he should be unable to prevail upon her to come away.  She might, he felt, demand a reason, exact from him the meaning of his unexpected appearance; there was even a hideous possibility that she might fly into a temper.

The wind was bitter and he went into the lobby, where a few men were hurrying out to secure their carriages.  Then at last came the crowd in evening dress, and it seemed to him that the acuteness of his perception was reinforced by an almost unnatural power of vision.  Out of the moving throng the face of each woman stood forth distinctly as if relieved by a spectral illumination; and he saw them clearly one after one, fair or dark, plain or beautiful, until from among them there shone toward him the elaborately arranged blonde head of Connie, under a winking diamond which shed over her an unbecoming light.  He had hoped to the last that she would be with several others, but he perceived when she came out at Brady’s side, with her babyish chin tilted upward and her thin features working in a forced and unhealthy animation, that they were alone and would probably be alone for the remainder of the evening.