The utmost that
I could do by a mighty effort of will was to cease
meeting the girl, and that I did. I even avoided the
chance encounters of the garden, leaving my lodg-
ing only when I knew that she had gone to her music
lessons, and returning after nightfall. Yet all the
while I was as one in a trance, indulging the most
fascinating fancies and ordering my entire in-
tellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my
friend, as one whose actions have a traceable rela-
tion to reason, you cannot know the fool's paradise
in which I lived.
'One evening the devil put it into my head to be
an unspeakable idiot. By apparently careless and
purposeless questioning I learned from my gossipy
landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined
my own, a party-wall between. Yielding to a sudden
and coarse impulse I gently rapped on the wall.
There was no response, naturally, but I was in no
mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me
and I repeated the folly, the offence, but again in-
effectually, and I had the decency to desist.
'An hour later, while absorbed in some of my in-
fernal studies, I heard, or thought I heard, my signal
answered. Flinging down my books I sprang to the
wall and as steadily as my beating heart would per-
mit gave three slow taps upon it. This time the re-
sponse was distinct, unmistakable: one, two, three
--an exact repetition of my signal. That was all I
could elicit, but it was enough--too much.
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