He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man.

"They!" Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling "come what must!" If they stopped him--all was lost; if they let him pass--all was lost too; they would remember him.

They were approaching; they were only a flight from him--and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left.

It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting.

The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes.