This happened yesterday. I ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen I wandered near the house in which she lives. Numbers were passing by in rows. Thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. I was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. “There soon,” I thought, “will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone’s shadow.⁠ ⁠… And I will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, ‘Thou’ (yes, ‘thou’ without fail), ‘Thou knowest I cannot live without thee any longer, then why⁠—⁠ ⁠… ?’ ” But silence reigned.