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.