I crossed the street, and looked up again at the house from the pavement opposite.  Then lingered a little, listening to the music as it reached me through the windows, and imagining to myself Margaret’s occupation at that moment.  After this, I turned away; and set forth eastward on my walk, careless in which direction I traced my steps.

I felt little impatience, and no sense of fatigue; for in less than two hours more I knew that I should see my wife again.  Until then, the present had no existence for me—­I lived in the past and future.  I wandered indifferently along lonely bye-streets, and crowded thoroughfares.  Of all the sights which attend a night-walk in a great city, not one attracted my notice.  Uninformed and unobservant, neither saddened nor startled, I passed through the glittering highways of London.  All sounds were silent to me save the love-music of my own thoughts; all sights had vanished before the bright form that moved through my bridal dream.  Where was my world, at that moment?  Narrowed to the cottage in the country which was to receive us on the morrow.  Where were the beings in the world?  All merged in one—­Margaret.

Sometimes, my thoughts glided back, dreamily and voluptuously, to the day when I first met her.  Sometimes, I recalled the summer evenings when we sat and read together out of the same book; and, once more, it was as if I breathed with the breath, and hoped with the hopes, and longed with the old longings of those days.  But oftenest it was with the morrow that my mind was occupied.  The first dream of all young men—­the dream of living rapturously with the woman they love, in a secret retirement kept sacred from friends and from strangers alike, was now my dream; to be realised in a few hours, to be realised with my waking on the morning which was already at hand!

For the last quarter of an hour of my walk, I must have been unconsciously retracing my steps towards the house of Margaret’s aunt.  I came in sight of it again, just as the sound of the neighbouring church clocks, striking eleven, roused me from my abstraction.  More cabs were in the street; more people were gathered about the door, by this time.  Was all this bustle, the bustle of arrival or of departure?  Was the party about to break up, at an hour when parties usually begin?  I determined to go nearer to the house, and ascertain whether the music had ceased, or not.

I had approached close enough to hear the notes of the harp and pianoforte still sounding as gaily as ever, when the house-door was suddenly flung open for the departure of a lady and gentleman.  The light from the hall-lamps fell on their faces; and showed me Margaret and Mr. Mannion.

Going home already!  An hour and a half before it was time to return!  Why?