And long before the morning she would pick up her skirts and be off again, swifter than ever, carrying her secret with her.
And so the chase went on.
At the present moment he found himself in the society of Shame, the oldest and most haggard of all the daughters of the night.

She was in no hurry to leave him.

It seemed to him that she sat beside him, formless and immense, that she laid her hands about him, and that the burning on his poor forehead was her brand there; that the scorching in his poor throat was the clutch of her fingers, and the torment in all his miserable body her fine manipulation of his nerves.

She knew the secret of the world; and had no sort of hesitation about telling it; it sounded to him uncommonly like something that he had heard before.

He recognized her as the form and voice of his own desire, the loathsome familiar body of unutterable thoughts, sordid, virulent, accusing, with a tongue that lashed through the flesh to the obscure spirit inside him.