If ever she had felt herself helpless, it was in this moment passing along the half-lit, half-empty city street. By what she knew, by what she wore around her neck, she was separated from all peace-abiding citizens—she was outlawed. Every closed door and shaded window (so many she had opened or looked out of!) now seemed shut and shaded against her for ever. Night and the reticent gray city, averting their eyes, let her slip through unregarded.
She was passing that section of large, old-fashioned mansions, cupolaed, towered, indistinct at the top of their high, broad steps, or back among the trees of their gardens. Along the front of one stretched a high hedge of laurestinas black as a ribbon of the night, capacious of shadows; and it seemed to Flora that all at once a shadow detached itself. She looked with a start. It flashed along the pavement—if shadow it were—running head down with a strange, scattering movement of arms and legs, yet seeming to make such speed that for a moment it kept abreast of the cab. She could see no features, no lineament of this strange thing to recognize, yet instantly she knew what it must be—what she had feared and thought impossible. She thrust her head far out and addressed the driver.
"Go as fast as you can, faster! and I'll give you twice what he gave you." The words rang so wildly to her own ears that she half expected the driver to peer down like an old bird of prey from his perch and demand her reason. But he made no sound or sign. It may have been that in his time he had heard even wilder requests than hers. He only sent his whip cracking forward to the ears of the lean horse, and the cab began to rattle like a mad thing.
Flora leaned back with a sigh of relief. The mere sensation of being borne along at such a rate, the sight of houses, lamp-posts, even people here and there, flitting away from the eye, unable to interrupt her course, or even to glimpse her identity, gave her a feeling of safety. The more she was getting into the residence part of the city, the more deserted the streets, the closer shut the windows of the houses, the more it seemed to her as if the night itself covered and abetted her flight. So swiftly she went it was only a wonder how the cab held together. She had never traveled more rapidly in her light and silent carriage. Now they whirled the corner and plunged at the steep rise of a cross street. Just above, over the crown of the hill, she saw the sky, moonless, blackish, spattered with stars. Then against it a little fluttering shape like a sentinel wisp—the only living thing in sight. It was incredible, impossible, horrible that he should be there, in front of her, waiting for her, who had driven so fast—too fast, it had seemed, for human foot to follow. By what unimaginable route had he traveled? She was ready to believe he had flown over the housetops. And above all other horrors, why was he pursuing her?
The carriage was abreast the Chinaman now, and immediately he took up his trot, for a little while keeping up, dodging along between light and shadow, presently falling behind. At intervals she heard the patter, patter, patter of his footsteps following; at intervals she lost the sound, and shadows would engulf the figure, and she would wait in a panic for its reappearance. For she knew it was there somewhere, on one side of the street or the other. But, oh, not to see it! To expect at any moment it might start up again—Heaven knew where, perhaps at her very carriage window. Her unconscious hand was doubled to a fist upon her breast, fast closed upon the sapphire.
With all her body braced, she leaned and looked far backward, and far forward, and now for a long time saw nothing. The distance was empty. The glare of arc-lights showed her the shadows of her own progress—the shadow of her vehicle shooting huge and misshapen now on the cobbles, now along a blank wall, wheels, body and driver, all lurching like one; now heaped on each other, now tenuously drawn out, now twisting themselves into shapes the mind could not account for. For here, whirling the corner, the carriage seemed to wave an arm, and now between the wheels, fast twinkling, she saw a pair of legs. She leaned and looked, so mesmerized with this grotesque appearance that it scarcely troubled her that all the way down the last long hill she knew it must be that a man was running at her wheel.
The warm lights of her house were just before her, offering succor, stiffening courage. It would be but a dash from the door of the cab to her own door. There was no second course, once the cab stopped. She felt that to lurk in its gloom would mean robbery, perhaps death. She thought without fear, but with an intense calculation. Her hand held the door at swing as the cab drew up. Before it should stop she must leap. She gathered her skirts and sprang—sprang clean to the sidewalk. The steps of her house rushed by her in her upward flight. Her bell pealed. She covered her eyes.
For the moment before Shima opened the door there was nothing but darkness and silence. She had never been so glad of anything in her life as of the kind, astute, yellow face he presented to her distressed appeal.
"Shima," she panted, "pay the cab; and if there's any one else there say that I'll call the police—no, no, send him away." There was no question or hesitation in Shima's obedience. Through the glass of the door she watched him descend upon his errand, until he disappeared over the edge of the illumination of the vestibule. She waited, dimly aware of voices going on beyond the curtains of the drawing-room, but all her listening power was concentrated on the silence without—a silence that remained unbroken, and out of which Shima returned with the same imperturable countenance.
"He wants ten dollars."