as the distance between himself and her decreased.  But he held resolutely on, nearing her at every step, round a sharp corner to the right, then to the left, to the right again, and once more in the opposite direction, always, as he knew, approaching the old stone bridge.  He was not a dozen paces behind her as she turned quickly a third time to the right, round the wall of the ancient house which faces the little square over against the enormous buildings comprising the Clementine Jesuit monastery and the astronomical observatory.  As he sprang past the corner he saw the heavy door just closing and heard the sharp resounding clang of its iron fastening.  The lady had disappeared, and he felt sure that she had gone through that entrance.

He knew the house well, for it is distinguished from all others in Prague, both by its shape and its oddly ornamented, unnaturally narrow front.  It is built in the figure of an irregular triangle, the blunt apex of one angle facing the little square, the sides being erected on the one hand along the Karlsgasse and on the other upon a narrow alley which leads away towards the Jews’ quarter.  Overhanging passages are built out over this dim lane, as though to facilitate the interior communications of the dwelling, and in the shadow beneath them there is a small door studded with iron nails which is invariably shut.  The main entrance takes in all the scant breadth of the truncated angle which looks towards the monastery.  Immediately over it is a great window, above that another, and, highest of all, under the pointed gable, a round and unglazed aperture, within which there is inky darkness.  The windows of the first and second stories are flanked by huge figures of saints, standing forth in strangely contorted attitudes, black with the dust of ages, black as all old Prague is black, with the smoke of the brown Bohemian coal, with the dark and unctuous mists of many autumns, with the cruel, petrifying frosts of ten score winters.

He who knew the cities of men as few have known them, knew also this house.  Many a time had he paused before it by day and by night, wondering who lived within its massive, irregular walls, behind those uncouth, barbarously sculptured saints who kept their interminable watch high up by the lozenged windows.  He would know now.  Since she whom he sought had entered, he would enter too; and in some corner of that dwelling which had long possessed a mysterious attraction for his eyes, he would find at last that being who held power over his heart, that Beatrice whom he had learned to think of as dead, while still believing that somewhere she must be yet alive, that dear lady whom, dead or living, he loved beyond all others, with a great love, passing words.

CHAPTER II