For a moment he stood, in puzzled curiosity, listening to the fate that his thoughts were prophesying; then, as if in answer antiphonal, terrible as the announcing of the chorus, came a quick thought, quick and sharp as a sword, fatal as a sword set against the heart.  He strove to turn its point aside, he attempted to pass it by, but on every side he met its point, though he reasoned in jocular and serious mood.  Then his courage falling through him like a stone dropped into a well, he crossed the street, seeking the place Flossy had told him of, and soon after saw her walking a little in front of him with another girl.  She beckoned him, leading the way through numerous by-streets.  Something in the sound of certain footsteps told him he was being followed; his reason warned him away, yet he could not but follow.  And in the shop below and on the stairs of the low eating-house where they had led him, loud voices were heard and tramping of feet.  Instantly he guessed the truth, and drew the furniture across the doorway.  The window was over twenty feet from the ground, but he might reach the water-butt.  He jumped from the window-sill, falling into the water, out of which he succeeded in drawing himself; hence he crawled along the wall, dropped into the lane, hearing his pursuers shouting to him from the window.  There were only a few children in the lane; he sped quickly past, gained a main street, hailed a cab, and was driven safely to the Temple.

He flung off his shoes, which were full of water; his trousers were soaking, and having rid himself of them, he wrapped himself in a dressing-gown, and went into the sitting-room in his slippers.  It was the same as when it was Frank’s room.  There was the grand piano and the slender brass lamps; he had lit none, but stood uncertain, his bed-room candle in his hand.  And listening, he could hear London along the Embankment—­all occasional cry, the rattle of a cab, the hollow whistle of a train about to cross the bridge at Blackfriars, the shrill whistle of a train far away in the night.  He had escaped from his pursuers, but not from himself.

“How horribly lonely it is here,” he muttered.  Then he thought of how narrowly he had escaped disgraceful exposure of his infamy.  “If those fellows had got hold of my name it would have been in the papers the day after to-morrow.  What a fool I am! why do I risk so much? and for what?” He turned from the memory as from sight of some disgustful deformity or disease.  Going to the mirror he studied his face for some reflection of the soul; but unable to master his feelings, in which there was at once loathing and despair, he threw open the window and walked out of the suffocating room into the sultry balcony.

It was hardly night; the transparent obscurity of the summer midnight was dissolving; the slight film of darkness which had wrapped the world was evanescent.  “Is it day or night?” he asked.  “Oh, it is day! another day has begun; I escaped from my mortal enemies, but not from the immortal day.  Like a gray beast it comes on soft velvet paws to devour.  Stay! oh, bland and beautiful night, thou that dost so charitably hide our misfortunes, stay!