“He shall never stand looking down on my body,” said Hugh to himself, “with his cursed foot upon me.”  And he realized that if he had been a worthier antagonist, that also might have been.  The play dealt with men.  Cassius and Lord Newhaven were men.  But what was he?

The fear of death leading the love of life by the hand took with shame a lower seat.  Hugh saw them at last in their proper places.  If he could have died then he would have died cheerfully, gladly, as he saw Cassius die by his own hand, counting death the little thing it is.  Afterwards, as he stood in the crowd near the door, where the rain was delaying the egress, he saw suddenly Lord Newhaven’s face watching him.  His heart leaped.  “He has come to make me keep my word,” he said to himself, the exaltation of the play still upon him.  “I will not avoid him.  Let him do it,” and he pressed forward towards him.

Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then disappeared.

“He will follow me and stab me in the back,” said Hugh.  “I will walk home by the street where the pavement is up, and let him do it.”

He walked slowly, steadily on, looking neither to right nor left.  Presently he came to a barrier across a long deserted street, with a red lamp keeping guard over it.  He walked deliberately up it.  He had no fear.  In the middle he stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

A soft step was coming up behind him.

“It will be quickly over,” he said to himself.  “Wait.  Don’t look round.”

He stood motionless.  His silver cigarette-case dropped from his hand.  He looked at it for a second, forgetting to pick it up.  A dirty hand suddenly pounced upon it, and a miserable ragged figure flew past him up the street.  Hugh stared after it, bewildered, and then looked round.  The street was quite empty.  He drew a long breath, and something between relief and despair took hold of him.

“Then he does not want to, after all.  He has not even followed me.  Why was he there?  He was waiting for me.  What horrible revenge is he planning against me.  Is he laying a second trap for me?”

* * * * *

The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord Newhaven had been accidently killed on the line.  The revulsion of feeling was too sudden, too overwhelming.  He could not bear it.  He could not live through it.  He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as if his heart would break.

* * * * *

The cyclone of passion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself and him, and flung him down at last.  How long a time elapsed he never knew between the moment when he, read the news of the accident and the moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised himself to his feet.  He opened the window, and the night air laid its cool mother-touch upon his face and hands.  The streets were silent.  The house was silent.  He leaned with closed eyes against the window-post.  Time passed by on the other side.