. . then the scuffling grew suddenly
nearer, and a black cloud settled over the moon. When again the pale
sheen skimmed the cornices, it was almost beside him, and Amory thought
he heard a quiet breathing. Suddenly he realized that the footsteps were
not behind, had never been behind, they were ahead and he was not eluding
but following . . . following. He began to run, blindly, his heart
knocking heavily, his hands clinched. Far ahead a black dot showed
itself, resolved slowly into a human shape. But Amory was beyond that
now; he turned off the street and darted into an alley, narrow and
dark and smelling of old rottenness. He twisted down a long, sinuous
blackness, where the moonlight was shut away except for tiny glints
and patches . . . then suddenly sank panting into a corner by a fence,
exhausted. The steps ahead stopped, and he could hear them shift
slightly with a continuous motion, like waves around a dock.
He put his face in his hands and covered eyes and ears as well as he
could. During all this time it never occurred to him that he was
delirious or drunk. He had a sense of reality such as material things
could never give him.
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