A log raft in the river invited him, and he seated himself on its outer edge and contemplated the dreary vastness of the stream, wishing, the while, that he could only be drowned, all at once and unconsciously, without undergoing the uncomfortable routine devised by nature.

Then he thought of his flower.

He got it out, rumpled and wilted, and it mightily increased his dismal felicity.

He wondered if she would pity him if she knew?
Would she cry, and wish that she had a right to put her arms around his neck and comfort him?
Or would she turn coldly away like all the hollow world?
This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind and set it up in new and varied lights, till he wore it threadbare.

At last he rose up sighing and departed in the darkness.
About half-past nine or ten o'clock he came along the deserted street to where the Adored Unknown lived; he paused a moment; no sound fell upon his listening ear; a candle was casting a dull glow upon the curtain of a second-story window.