The wind had gone down, but it still rained.

Not quite so tempestuously as when he roamed the cemetery, but steadily enough to keep eaves and branches dripping.
The sound of this ceaseless drip was eerie enough to his strained senses, waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life.

He tried to forget it and wrote diligently, putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider, so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers.

But the sound had got on his brain, and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking he heard a deep roar mingling with the incessant patter, a roar which the wind had hitherto prevented him from separating from the general turmoil, but which now was apparent enough to call for some explanation.
He had made no mistake; a steady sound of rushing water filled the outside air.

A fall was near, a fall by means of which, no doubt, the factories were run.
Why had he not thought of this?
Why had its sound held a note of menace for him, awakening feelings he did not understand and from which he sought to escape?
A factory fall swollen by the rain! What was there in this to make his hand shake and cause the deepening night to seem positively hateful to him?
With a bang he closed the window; then he softly threw it up again.