He was at a complete loss how to express to himself the feeling of dread; a subtle feeling that somehow refused to be translated into the carefully acquired English of which he was so proud.
For a moment he doubted himself. Doubted that, were he so thoroughly American, he could feel the Oriental's subconscious recognition of the purposeful, sinister intent in the huddled mass of darkened shop windows with their rain-dripping signs; in the shining reptile scales of the asphalt underfoot; in the pulsing intensity of the hot, torpid July atmosphere.
A street lamp flickered its uncertain light sluggishly over the carefully groomed figure and across the placid breath of the yellow face.
He paused a second as he saw a form come lurching unsteadily out of the gloom ahead of him. It came nearer and he could see that what had at first appeared to be a dark, undefinable mass, pushed here and there by unseen hands, was in reality a man swaying drunkenly out of the shadows.
He watched the man curiously, with a little of that contemptuous feeling an Oriental always holds for any expression of excess. As the man stood before him in the darkness, as he stumbled and seemed about to fall, he put out his hand and caught him by the elbow.
"Thank 'e;" the drunken eyes blinked blearily up into his stolid impassive face. "It's fine to be saved on a stormy night like this. It is—"
"Don't mention it."
"It's a powerful dark night;—it is."
"Les. That is so."
"And it's a damn long way home. Ain't it?"