And still no news of his absence came to his ears.
The re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness.

Suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent.

The light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless intention of joining Ostrog to a keen anxiety.
For a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and weary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in his cause.

The frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by some moving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite of his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his approaching it.
From the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it conveyed news of the fighting about the Council House.

Ignorance and indecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements.