In the wild events which were to follow this girl had no part at all; he never saw her again until all his tale was over.

And yet, in some indescribable way, she kept recurring like a motive in music through all his mad adventures afterwards, and the glory of her strange hair ran like a red thread through those dark and ill-drawn tapestries of the night.

For what followed was so improbable, that it might well have been a dream.
When Syme went out into the starlit street, he found it for the moment empty.

Then he realised (in some odd way) that the silence was rather a living silence than a dead one.

Directly outside the door stood a street lamp, whose gleam gilded the leaves of the tree that bent out over the fence behind him.