He was being driven, by impulses that he understood only too well, into the noisiest life that he could manage to find about him.

The more noise the better; he had only a cold fear at his heart that, after all, it would penetrate his dreaded loneliness too little, let it be as loud a noise as he could possibly summon.
He had not now--and this was the more terrible--any consciousness of Carfax at all; there was waiting for him, lurking, beast-like, until its inevitable moment, something far more terrible.
Meanwhile he made encounters.

.

.

.