The lonely man who was pacing the icy pavement of the deserted street on that bitter winter’s day felt the difficulty very keenly.  He would not yield and he could not advance.  His heart was filled with forebodings which his wisdom bade him treat with indifference, while his passion gave them new weight and new horror with every minute that passed.

He had seen with his eyes and heard with his ears.  Beatrice had been before him, and her voice had reached him among the voices of thousands, but now, since the hours has passed and he had not found her, it was as though he had been near her in a dream, and the strong certainty took hold of him that she was dead and that he had looked upon her wraith in the shadowy church.

He was a strong man, not accustomed to distrust his senses, and his reason opposed itself instantly to the suggestion of the supernatural.  He had many times, on entering a new city, felt himself suddenly elated by the irresistible belief that his search was at an end, and that within a few hours he must inevitably find her whom he had sought so long.  Often as he passed through the gates of some vast burying-place, he had almost hesitated to walk through the silent ways, feeling all at once convinced that upon the very first headstone he was about to see the name that was ever in his heart.  But the expectation of final defeat, like the anticipation of final success, had been always deceived.  Neither living nor dead had he found her.

Two common, reasonable possibilities lay before him, and two only.  He had either seen Beatrice, or he had not.  If she had really been in the Teyn Kirche, she was in the city and not far from him.  If she had not been there, he had been deceived by an accidental but extraordinary likeness.  Within the logical concatenation of cause and effect there was no room for any other supposition, and it followed that his course was perfectly clear.  He must continue his search until he should find the person he had seen, and the result would be conclusive, for he would again see the same face and hear the same voice.  Reason told him that he had in all likelihood been mistaken after all.  Reason reminded him that the church had been dark, the multitude of worshippers closely crowded together, the voices that sang almost innumerable and wholly undistinguishable from each other.  Reason showed him a throng of possibilities, all pointing to an error of his perceptions and all in direct contradiction with the one fact which his loving instinct held for true.

The fear of evil, the presentiment of death, defied logic and put its own construction and interpretation upon the strange event.  He neither believed, nor desired to believe, in a supernatural visitation, yet the inexplicable certainty of having seen a ghostly vision overwhelmed reason and all her arguments.  Beatrice was dead.  Her spirit had passed in that solemn hour when the Wanderer had stood in the dusky church; he had looked upon her shadowy wraith, and had heard the echo of a voice from beyond the stars, whose crystal tones already swelled the diviner harmony of an angelic strain.