There was a raw, biting chill in the air, and his hands, ungloved, as they swung at his sides, were blue with cold. But sweat in great beads stood out upon his forehead. At times his lips moved and he spoke aloud. It was a hoarse sound.
“Or him!” he said. “Or him!”
On! Always on! There was no rest. It was ceaseless. The gray came into the East.
And then at last the figure halted.
There was a large window with wire grating, and a light burned within. In the window was a plate mirror, and a time-piece. It was a jeweler's window.
The man looked at the time-piece. It was five o'clock. He looked at the mirror. It reflected the face of a young man grown old. The eyes burned deep in their sockets; the lines were hard, without softness; the skin was tightly drawn across the cheek bones, and was colorless. And he stared at the face, stared for a time without recognition. And then as he smiled and the face in the mirror smiled with him in a distorted movement of the lips, he swept his hand across his eyes.
“John Bruce,” he said.
It seemed to arouse him from some mental absorption in which his physical entity had been lost. It was five o'clock, and he was John Bruce. At eleven o'clock—or was it twelve?—last night he had left Hawkins standing by the door of the traveling pawn-shop, and since then——
He stared around him. He was somewhere downtown. He did not know where. He began to walk in an uptown direction.
Something had been born in those hours. Something cataclysmic. What was it?