Then what remained to him in life? He almost
wished he had been allowed to go forward to this climax unknowing; to
have gone with his heart still filled with faith; to be assured until
the last moment that Natalie would remember how he had fulfilled his
promise to her.
It was a dark night for him, within and without. But as he sat there at
the window, or walked up and down, wrestling with these demons of doubt
and despair, a dull blue light gradually filled the sky outside; the
orange stars on the bridges grew less intense; the broad river became
visible in the dusk. Then by-and-by the dull blue cleared into a pale
steel-gray, and the forms of the boats could be made out, anchored in
the stream there: these were the first indications of the coming dawn.
Somehow or other he ceased these restless pacings of his, and was
attracted to the window, though he gazed but absently on the slow change
taking place outside--the world-old wonder of the new day rising in the
east. Up into that steely-gray glides a soft and luminous
saffron-brown; it spreads and widens; against it the far dome of St.
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