"Come back! Come back!" Axia's arm fell on his. "Amory, dear, you aren't
going, Amory!" He was half-way to the door.

"Come on, Amory, stick 'th us!"

"Sick, are you?"

"Sit down a second!"

"Take some water."

"Take a little brandy...."

The elevator was close, and the colored boy was half asleep, paled to
a livid bronze... Axia's beseeching voice floated down the shaft. Those
feet... those feet...

As they settled to the lower floor the feet came into view in the sickly
electric light of the paved hall.

*****

IN THE ALLEY

Down the long street came the moon, and Amory turned his back on it and
walked. Ten, fifteen steps away sounded the footsteps. They were like a
slow dripping, with just the slightest insistence in their fall.
Amory's shadow lay, perhaps, ten feet ahead of him, and soft shoes was
presumably that far behind. With the instinct of a child Amory edged in
under the blue darkness of the white buildings, cleaving the moonlight
for haggard seconds, once bursting into a slow run with clumsy
stumblings. After that he stopped suddenly; he must keep hold, he
thought. His lips were dry and he licked them.

If he met any one good--were there any good people left in the world or
did they all live in white apartment-houses now? Was every one followed
in the moonlight? But if he met some one good who'd know what he meant
and hear this damned scuffle... 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 wa