The rapture of it kept time to my hurrying footsteps; it flew over and with me, like the albatross of hope, and brought the breeze of a healthfuler promise on its wings; it spoke from the faces of people I passed, as if they wished me to know as I swept by that I was no longer in their eyes a man of blood.
“You did not kill him!” it sung in my brain—“you did not kill him—you did not kill him”—then all in a moment, with a dying shock: “Who did?”
I stopped, as if I had run against a wall. I swear, till then no shadowy thought of this side of the question had darkened my heart in passing.
Still, impelled to an awful haste, I beat the whole horror resolutely to one side and rushed on my way. “Presently—presently,” I muttered, “I will sit down and rest and think it over from beginning to end.”
By that time I was in a street of ugly cockney houses stretching monotonously on either side. I was speeding down it, seeking its name, and convinced from my inquiries that I could not be far from my destination, when something standing crouched against a low front garden wall, where it met the angle of a tall brick gate post, caught the tail of my eye and stopped me with a jerk. It was Duke, and I had run him down.
He spat a curse from his drawn, white lips, as I faced him, and bade me begone as I valued my life.
“Duke,” I panted, watchful of him, “I do value it now—never mind why. I value it far above his you have come to take. But he is my brother—and you were once my friend.”
“No longer—I swear it,” he cried, blazing out on me dreadfully. “Will you go while there’s time?”
Then he assumed a mockery more bitter than his rage.
“Harkee!” he whispered. “This isn’t the place. I came here to be out of the way and rest. I’ll go home by and by.”