As the cars approached Philadelphia his heart beat so fast that it almost stifled him, and he leaned against the window heavily for air and support.  It was useless to reason with himself, vain to call good judgment to his counsels and summon wisdom to his aid.  This was her home.  Somewhere in this city to which he was so rapidly hastening, she was moving up and down, had her being, was living and loving.  After these long years his eyes so ached to see her, his heart was so hungry for her presence, that it seemed to him as though the sheer longing would call her out of her retreat, on to the streets through which he must pass, across his path, into the sight of his eyes and reach of his hand.  He had thought that he felt all this before.  He found, as the space diminished between them,—­as, perchance, she was but a stone’s throw from his side,—­that the pain, and the longing, and the intolerable desire to behold her once again, increased a hundred-fold.

Eager as he had been a little while before to reach his home, he was content to remain quietly here now.  He laughed at himself as he stepped into a carriage, and, tired as he was,—­for his amputated arm, not yet thoroughly healed, made him weak and worn,—­drove through all the afternoon and evening, across miles and miles of heated, wearisome stones, possessed by the idea that somewhere, somehow, he should see her, he would find her before his quest was done.

After that last painful rebuff, he did not dare to go to her home, could he find it, till he had secured from her, in some fashion, a word or sign.  “This,” he said, “is certainly doubly absurd, since she does not live in the city; but she is here to-day, I know,—­she must be here”; and persisted in his endeavor,—­persisted, naturally, in vain; and went to bed, at last, exhausted; determined that to-morrow should find him on his journey farther north, whatever wish might plead for delay, yet with a final cry for her from the depths of his soul, as he stretched out his solitary arm, ere sinking to restless sleep, and dreams of battle and death—­sleep unrefreshing, and dreams ill-omened; as he thought, again and again, rousing himself from their hold, and looking out to the night, impatient for the break of day.

When day broke he was unable to rise with its dawn.  The effect of all this tension on his already overtaxed nerves was to induce a fever in the unhealed arm, which, though not painful, was yet sufficient to hold him close prisoner for several days; a delay which chafed him, and which filled his family at home with an intolerable anxiety, not that they knew its cause,—­that would have been a relief,—­but that they conjectured another, to them infinitely worse than sickness or suffering, bad and sorrowful as were these.

CHAPTER X

  “Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you.”

  Izaak Walton