From him, at any rate, he was safe.

Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he was.

The mask of youth had saved him.
And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have become suddenly colder.

Oh! in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the scene! He saw it all again.

Each hideous detail came back to him with added horror.