In his present numbed sense of outlines and of jumbled conceptions Dangerfield had obeyed a sullen instinct of revolt when he had drawn Inga from the studio to plunge again into the heavy slumber of the city. He had a confused idea that, in this groping flight through deserted midnight regions, he would find some way to discourage her, to shake off this uncomplaining obstacle to his liberty of decision. The long flights of stone steps down which they groped their way, put forth hollow, echoing protests which mounted behind them as they sank deeper into the cavernous descent, until they emerged into the arcade, wan and still with its faint, watery glass sides and dipping vines, and ahead, Broadway yawning at the entrance.

Dangerfield strode on, seeing neither to the right nor to the left, and, following the whim of the moment, turned westward toward the river. A late car roared down the long vista and fled, retreating in softening rumbles. The street was empty and the acute sound of their steps struck in fantastic distortion against the city of silence. A policeman from the shadow of a doorway studied them with suspicion. Above them, mysterious leviathans—swollen gas-towers—spread black bulks against the sprinkled night. He stopped and turned on her, seeing her white face dimly in the flickering street.

“So you are following me?” he said angrily.

“Please.”

She moved a little closer, her hands clasped and at her throat, in her voice that low almost guttural note of soothing appeal which she knew had the charm of quieting him. He stared at her blankly, confusing her with other voices and other memories, and, in the end, with a nervous shake of his head, strode away, apparently oblivious of her presence.

The tenements closed in over them, putting forth their heavy, crowded smells. A random fruit-stand glowed at their sides, its drowsy guardian snoring behind glass partitions; beyond him, a senseless body, wrapped in rags huddled in the warmth of a “family entrance”; shouts, curses, laughter rolled out from a blinded back parlor, and, all at once, a stream of yellow shot across the oozing black of the street. They stopped abruptly; from the doorway an old man reeled forth, and by his side, guiding his hand, a child—an unearthly child with an aureole of golden hair. He came opposite, lurched almost on them, touched them with a groping hand and passed, grumbling. He was blind. Dangerfield began to laugh with that short, blood-freezing laughter of his, which was the cry of all the bitterness within his soul. She shuddered and momentarily clung to his arm, turning to watch the child and the drunkard fading into the gloom.

“Afraid?” he said triumphantly.

“No, no—memories,” she said involuntarily.

“You?” he said, staring at her.

She nodded, her grip on his arm tightening.

“I remember,” she said, in a whisper.

“She remembers,” he repeated to himself, incapable of ordering his ideas, vastly impressed by an emotion he could not have defined, for he added, “She, too—leading me.” And as though the figure of the child had become merged into the hundred and one shifting memories which walked, dissolved, and returned to his side, he stalked on, his hand on the girl’s shoulder, heavy with his weight. Everything became confused in his mind, Paris, Rome, Florence, London, New York, the crowded boulevards, the Thames Embankment, and the outer fortifications. The blurred uprise of the gas-works settled into the age-worn outline of the Forum, and the next moment, with the wet breath of the river on his face and the vigilant lights of the Palisades bright in the air, he was skirting the Arno, with Fiesole mingling with the stars.

The cold touch of the river wind momentarily revived him. Slowly the Arno faded from his vision. He stood, in puzzled, dawning comprehension, on the long water-front, with its sleeping docks and nodding mastheads. Beyond lay the tragic depths of the river, rolling away like the tears of multitudes, luminous insects crawling back and forth. At his feet, straggling trucks were rumbling heavily; a few all-night cafÉs, far-spaced, streaked the broad avenue with their gleaming fingers. He shrank back into the city, into the phantasmagoria which closed over his eyes and roared on his senses, back on Broadway once more, with its occasional taxi, bright with late revelers.

At Sixty-first Street he halted before the revolving facets of the entrance to Costello’s. The footman without saluted him and called him by name. A few parties, with sudden bursts of white satin and colored brilliance, were leaving the noisy salons. Others returning from earlier rounds of gaiety were pressing through, like fluttering, many-tinted butterflies.

“I’m going in,” he said sullenly.

“If you want to,” she answered.

He had expected resistance. Compliance irritated him. The next moment, they were in the anteroom, dazed by their abrupt transition from the bleakness of the slums into this fragrant warm nest of indolence and luxury, aware of perfumed currents, glowing bodies, and the seduction of rioting rhythms. They mounted in an elevator to a privileged room, where all sensations seemed mingled in the confusion of the awakening senses, where, for a moment, she was uncomfortably conscious of the dark, incongruous blot her sober attire made against the swarming flood of color. A waiter, unimpressed, was preparing a hostile answer when Costello himself came up with hand outstretched at the sight of Dangerfield. He turned to the girl, greeting her cordially.

“Glad to see you here again; haven’t seen you for a long time.”

“A table, Costello.”

“Get you one right away, Mr. Garford.”

At his magic touch, they found themselves advantageously placed by the open floor where the dancers crowded and swept against them. Dangerfield ordered a bottle of champagne and turned to her.

“Funny mistake Costello made.”

“What?”

“Acted as though he knew you.”

“Yes; I used to come here—it amused me occasionally.”

“You, Inga?”

“Why not?” she said, opening her eyes.

“After all, why not? Queer though,” he said stupidly but he continued to stare at her, as though this were a manifestation stranger than the riot of cities and visions through which he had come.

She did not refuse the glass of champagne he poured her, but, after raising it to her lips, put it down and did not touch it again. Among this incredible crowd made up of the extremes of society—women of the world seeking refuge from boredom, and courtesans, giving themselves the dignity and manners which, in their covetous ignorance, they associated with conventional society, there were many who knew Dangerfield, who stared in impudent amazement or discussed him in whispers, with sidelong glances. A number of men came up and greeted him boisterously.

“Want to dance with them?” he asked, nodding to her.

She shook her head.

“Not to-night.”

The spectacle began to bore him. He complained of the champagne and changed his order. She gave no word of suggestion, watching him with occasional stolen glances, wondering at his control. Her elbows on the table, her little curved chin on the backs of her hands, rather Egyptian in the immobility of her pose and the baffling quality of her expression, she followed the dance without distinguishing the dancers, quite unconscious of the curiosity she awoke, serious and on her guard. When friends of his sought her as a partner or tried to engage her in conversation, she answered in a few quiet words without looking at them. They soon understood from a glance at her companion what her rÔle must be, and importuned her no further.

When she least expected it, Dangerfield rose impatiently and departed.

“How futile that all is!” he said angrily, when they were again on the sidewalk. “Think they’re having a good time—bah!” He swayed for the first time and caught her shoulder, drawing his fingers tightly over his temples. “My brain is rocking,” he said.

“The air will do you good. Walk a little.”

He made an effort, took a long breath, and opened his eyes.

“You still here?” he said, frowning.

She nodded.

“Why do you follow me like this?” he said peevishly.

“Because I care what happens to you.”

“That is ridiculous!” he said loudly.

He stared a moment at her with his wild-animal stare, and, all at once, as though he had found a way to get rid of her, started down Eighth Avenue. They arrived at Columbus Circle with the first muddied grays of the dawn creeping in above the whitening electric signs, then passed under the elevated as a train shrieked and roared above them in its burning flight. A touring car went whirring past them, defiant of speed-laws, skidded dangerously, righting itself, and disappeared.

Scavengers were already turning over the refuse in waiting ash-cans, as they struck into a side street and stopped before an iron grill under the colored electric sign, “Mantell’s.” A little man with ratty eyes and black wisps of hair streaking the bald dome of his head, shuffled to the gate and squinted at them cautiously before slipping the chain.

The low rooms were swept with drifting gray-blue smoke clouds, upholstered benches were against the walls, where oldish women, worn with the fatigue of the night, were smiling their red smiles at fatuous youngsters. Three or four foreign-looking groups, swarthy men with enormous women, were in corners placidly engaged in their own affairs as though this were the most respectable of family resorts. A mechanical piano in a further room drummed out hideous dance-music to swirling groups in frank abandon. Dangerfield was no longer conscious of anything but an angry determination to revolt, to be free of all encumbrance. It seemed to his fuddled imagination that it was no longer Inga at his side but something strangely akin to his conscience, defiantly pursuing him out of the past of his youth and illusions, malignantly and maliciously clinging to him. Somehow, somewhere, he must rid himself of this impossible burden, crush it down, and cast it aside.

The more Inga continued silent and without remonstrance, the wilder his resentment mounted. He continued to drink of the poisonous rank beverages served at extortionate prices. Many stared at them and discussed them openly, but no interference was offered. There was something so combustible and wild in his attitude, that, there, at least no one was under illusions as to the danger. In half an hour the spirit of restlessness in him drove him out into the streets again. He was so befuddled now, that he could not remember her name, calling her Pepita, imagining that she was the little Spanish model of the Latin Quarter who had tried to kill herself.

All at once a horror of the city, of its sham brilliance paling against the graying sky, of its oppressive stone prisons, possessed him with a longing for flight. He strode down into the subway and took a West Farms express. In the car which they entered a score of persons were wearily grouped, half of them asleep, a few heavy-eyed laborers, two men in evening dress, a girl with a heavy coat buttoned over a ball dress, arms folded, and gazing stolidly ahead. Dangerfield seated himself in a corner, nodded, and went to sleep. When they reached the end of the line Inga awoke him with the help of the guard, and asked him what he wanted to do.

He got up suddenly and walked down the long steps to the street. They were in the open spaces of the upper city; a few milk-wagons were passing at rare intervals, about them was the feeling of the rediscovered earth in long, empty, grass-grown lots. He had not spoken a word. Suddenly he stopped and turned, with a new menace in his voice.

“Well—had enough?”

“I’m not tired,” she said, shaking her head and meeting his look steadily.

“We’ll see,” he said, and started off so furiously that, for a time, she was put to it to keep up with him. At the end, from the need of taking breath himself, he stopped and wheeled on her.

“What—you’re still here!”

“Yes.”

She forced a smile, and this smile completed his exasperation.

“Why won’t you let me go?” he cried, in an outburst of rage. “You let me go, do you hear? Dogging and sneaking about me! What right you got—what business is it what I do! No one shall stop me—no one, do you hear?” He advanced threateningly on her. “Had enough of interference—d’you understand? You let me go now—let me go, or I’ll—”

Midway in a gesture as he raised his hand to seize her, his legs shook under him, his voice stopped in his throat, he heaved forward, backward, then down on his face, and lay still in a crumpled mass.

She bent down swiftly, examined him, perceived that he was completely drunk and rose to look for help. It was nearing six o’clock but the houses were still closed against the night. Near her at a corner saloon, a studded glass sign announced:

Bostweiler’s Private Hotel

She hesitated a moment before the squalor and sordidness of the hotel entrance, divining the hideousness into which she had chanced, shuddered and rang the night bell. A colored doorman, sleeping somewhere in the green-lit hallway, called sleepily:

“Come right in!”

She knocked again and again with insistent, angry knocks, until he came stumbling and rubbing his eyes to the door. He smelt horribly of cheap whisky. With his aid she got Dangerfield in and up-stairs. The watcher grinned knowingly and, rather than enter into explanations, she hastily thrust a bill into his hand and dismissed him. Dangerfield on the bed was still unconscious. The room was tawdry, the carpet in shreds, the gas-fixture bent, and the blistered furniture covered with cheap, soiled imitation lace. She locked the door and drew a sofa before it, opened the windows, and sat down in a rocking-chair, her head racked with weary pains, watching the drabs and grays as they scurried before the gorgeous cavalcade of the victorious sun.

All at once Inga awoke with a sense of danger. Dangerfield was standing at the foot of her chair, or rather the specter of Dangerfield looked down at her with drawn lips and pasty face, with twitching nerves. It was late afternoon.