“I knew that. The mere thought of it was that. But it would also be the nearest approach to a joy that I could expect. So, in the hope that I might see you, I would stand for hours on the corner of your street, in the snow, in the rain, in the hot sun or cold wind, watching the door of your house, waiting for you to pass in or out--very much as, in the old times, I would watch the door of a house where I knew that you were visiting, and wait to join you at your exit. (Do you remember? And how surprised you always used to be?) But I was always disappointed. I never once saw you. I would walk, also, in those quarters of the city where ladies throng to do their shopping; always searching for one face in the crowd, but never finding it. And I haunted regularly the rehearsals at Steinway Hall and at the Academy of Music, closely watching the audience as it passed out, always hoping that my experience of that afternoon in February might be repeated, invariably getting my labor for my pains. Where did you keep yourself? Oh, sometimes I felt that I positively could not live without a sight of you. I was starving for a sight of you. Only to see you for one little moment! Only to feed my heart with one brief glimpse of you! That did not seem such a greedy or unreasonable desire. It could do you no harm, provided I were careful not to _be_ seen, as well as to see; and I meant to be careful about that. It could do no living creature harm; and to me--oh, to me it would be like a drop of water to a man consumed by thirst. Then my wish would become the father of my thought. I would say: