Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Knowing that only by some desperate chance he could hope to meet her in
his random wanderings, it seemed to him that he was more likely to be
successful by resigning as far as possible all volition, and leaving
the guidance of the search to chance; as if Fortune were best disposed
toward those who most entirely abdicated intelligence and trusted
themselves to her. He sacredly followed every impulse, never making up
his mind an hour before at what station he should leave the cars, and
turning to the right or left in his wanderings through the streets of
cities, as much as possible without intellectual choice. Sometimes,
waking suddenly in the middle of the night, he would rise, dress with
eager haste, and sally out to wander through the dark streets, thinking
he might be led of Providence to meet her. And, once out, nothing but
utter exhaustion could drive him back; for how could he tell but in
the moment after he had gone, she might pass? He had recourse to every
superstition of sortilege, clairvoyance, presentiment, and dreams.
And all the time his desperation was singularly akin to hope. He dared
revile no seeming failure, not knowing but just that was the necessary
link in the chain of accidents destined to bring him face to face with
her. The darkest hour might usher in the sunburst. The possibility that
this was at last the blessed chance lit up his eyes ten thousand times
as they fell on some new face.
But at last he found himself back in Bonn, with the feverish infatuation
of the gambler, which had succeeded hope in his mind, succeeded in turn
by utter despair! His sole occupation now was revisiting the spots which
he had frequented with her in that happy year. As one who has lost a
princely fortune sits down at length to enumerate the little items of
property that happen to be attached to his person, disregarded before
but now his all, so Randall counted up like a miser the little store of
memories that were thenceforth to be his all. Wonderfully, the smallest
details of those days came back to him. The very seats they sat in at
public places, the shops they entered together, their promenades and the
pausing-places on them, revived in memory under a concentrated inward
gaze like invisible paintings brought over heat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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