He drew two long breaths.  It was as he began drawing a third and realizing the strange feeling of the almost stillness about him that he heard a new kind of sound at the side of the garden nearest his hiding-place.  It sounded like the creak of a door opening somewhere in the wall behind the laurel hedge.  Some one was coming into the garden by a private entrance.  He pushed aside the young boughs again and tried to see, but the darkness was too dense.  Yet he could hear if the thunder would not break again.  There was the sound of feet on the wet gravel, the footsteps of more than one person coming toward where he stood, but not as if afraid of being heard; merely as if they were at liberty to come in by what entrance they chose.  Marco remained very still.  A sudden hope gave him a shock of joy.  If the man with the tired face chose to hide himself from his acquaintances, he might choose to go in and out by a private entrance.  The footsteps drew near, crushing the wet gravel, passed by, and seemed to pause somewhere near the balcony; and them flame lit up the sky again and the thunder burst forth once more.

But this was its last great peal.  The storm was at an end.  Only fainter and fainter rumblings and mutterings and paler and paler darts followed.  Even they were soon over, and the cataracts in the paths had rushed themselves silent.  But the darkness was still deep.

It was deep to blackness in the hollow of the evergreen.  Marco stood in it, streaming with rain, but feeling nothing because he was full of thought.  He pushed aside his greenery and kept his eyes on the place in the blackness where the windows must be, though he could not see them.  It seemed that he waited a long time, but he knew it only seemed so really.  He began to breathe quickly because he was waiting for something.

Suddenly he saw exactly where the windows were—­because they were all lighted!

His feeling of relief was great, but it did not last very long.  It was true that something had been gained in the certainty that his man had not left Vienna.  But what next?  It would not be so easy to follow him if he chose only to go out secretly at night.  What next?  To spend the rest of the night watching a lighted window was not enough.  To-morrow night it might not be lighted.  But he kept his gaze fixed upon it.  He tried to fix all his will and thought-power on the person inside the room.  Perhaps he could reach him and make him listen, even though he would not know that any one was speaking to him.  He knew that thoughts were strong things.  If angry thoughts in one man’s mind will create anger in the mind of another, why should not sane messages cross the line?

“I must speak to you.  I must speak to you!” he found himself saying in a low intense voice.  “I am outside here waiting.  Listen!  I must speak to you!”