I longed to leave them as the criminal on the scaffold longs for the axe to descend: that is, I wished the pang over.

How much I wished it, they could not tell.
On these points, mine was a state of mind out of their experience.
It was dark when Dr.John handed me from the carriage at Madame Beck's door.

The lamp above was lit; it rained a November drizzle, as it had rained all day: the lamplight gleamed on the wet pavement.

Just such a night was it as that on which, not a year ago, I had first stopped at this very threshold; just similar was the scene.

I remembered the very shapes of the paving-stones which I had noted with idle eye, while, with a thick-beating heart, I waited the unclosing of that door at which I stood--a solitary and a suppliant.