Erelong, the power of thinking began to return to me by degrees.

Misery, and shame, and horror, and a vain yearning to hide myself from all human eyes, and weep out my life in secret, overcame me.  Then, these subsided; and ONE THOUGHT slowly arose in their stead—­arose, and cast down before it every obstacle of conscience, every principle of education, every care for the future, every remembrance of the past, every weakening influence of present misery, every repressing tie of family and home, every anxiety for good fame in this life, and every idea of the next that was to come.  Before the fell poison of that Thought, all other thoughts—­good or evil—­died.  As it spoke secretly within me, I felt my bodily strength coming back; a quick vigour leapt hotly through my frame.  I turned, and looked round towards the room we had just left—­my mind was looking at the room beyond it, the room they were in.

The waiter was still standing by my side, watching me intently.  He suddenly started back; and, with pale face and staring eyes, pointed down the stairs.

“You go,” he whispered, “go directly!  You’re well now—­I’m afraid to have you here any longer.  I saw your look, your horrid look at that room!  You’ve heard what you wanted for your money—­go at once; or, if I lose my place for it, I’ll call out Murder, and raise the house.  And mind this:  as true as God’s in heaven, I’ll warn them both before they go outside our door!”

Hearing, but not heeding him, I left the house.  No voice that ever spoke, could have called me back from the course on which I was now bound.  The waiter watched me vigilantly from the door, as I went out.  Seeing this, I made a circuit, before I returned to the spot where, as I had suspected, the cab they had ridden in was still waiting for them.

The driver was asleep inside.  I awoke him; told him I had been sent to say that he was not wanted again that night:  and secured his ready departure, by at once paying him on his own terms.  He drove off; and the first obstacle on the fatal path which I had resolved to tread unopposed, was now removed.

As the cab disappeared from my sight, I looked up at the sky.  It was growing very dark.  The ragged black clouds, fantastically parted from each other in island shapes over the whole surface of the heavens, were fast drawing together into one huge, formless, lowering mass, and had already hidden the moon for, good.  I went back to the street, and stationed myself in the pitch darkness of a passage which led down a mews, situated exactly opposite to the hotel.

In the silence and obscurity, in the sudden pause of action while I now waited and watched, my Thought rose to my lips, and my speech mechanically formed it into words.  I whispered softly to myself:  I will kill him when he comes out. My mind never swerved for an instant from this thought—­never swerved towards myself; never swerved towards her. Grief was numbed at my heart; and the consciousness of my own misery was numbed with grief.  Death chills all before it—­and Death and my Thought were one.