He found, as the space diminished between them,--as, perchance, she was but a stone's throw from his side,--that the pain, and the longing, and the intolerable desire to behold her once again, increased a hundred-fold.
Eager as he had been a little while before to reach his home, he was content to remain quietly here now.

He laughed at himself as he stepped into a carriage, and, tired as he was,--for his amputated arm, not yet thoroughly healed, made him weak and worn,--drove through all the afternoon and evening, across miles and miles of heated, wearisome stones, possessed by the idea that somewhere, somehow, he should see her, he would find her before his quest was done.
After that last painful rebuff, he did not dare to go to her home, could he find it, till he had secured from her, in some fashion, a word or sign.

"This," he said, "is certainly doubly absurd, since she does not live in the city; but she is here to-day, I know,--she must be here"; and persisted in his endeavor,--persisted, naturally, in vain; and went to bed, at last, exhausted; determined that to-morrow should find him on his journey farther north, whatever wish might plead for delay, yet with a final cry for her from the depths of his soul, as he stretched out his solitary arm, ere sinking to restless sleep, and dreams of battle and death--sleep unrefreshing, and dreams ill-omened; as he thought, again and again, rousing himself from their hold, and looking out to the night, impatient for the break of day.
When day broke he was unable to rise with its dawn.

The effect of all this tension on his already overtaxed nerves was to induce a fever in the unhealed arm, which, though not painful, was yet sufficient to hold him close prisoner for several days; a delay which chafed him, and which filled his family at home with an intolerable anxiety, not that they knew its cause,--_that_ would have been a relief,--but that they conjectured another, to them infinitely worse than sickness or suffering, bad and sorrowful as were these..