Beverly heard no more. Uttering a blasphemous oath, he rushed from the room.
And the babe, awakened by the sound of voices, opened its clear, innocent eyes, and reached forth its baby hands toward its mother.
Urged forward by an impulse like madness, Beverly entered the rooms on the first floor, seized the rough overcoat and threw it on, passing the red neckerchief around its collar, to conceal his face. Then drawing the cap over his eyes, he hurried from the house.
"It's all nonsense," he muttered, and descended the steps.—"I'll walk it off."
Walk it off! And yet the fever burned the more fiercely, his temples throbbed more madly, as he said the words. Leaving behind him the closed mansion of Eugene Livingstone, with the crape fluttering on the door, he bent his steps toward Broadway.
"I'm nervous," he muttered.—"The words of that dev'lish hysterical woman have unsettled me. How cold it is!" He felt cold as ice for a moment, and the next instant his veins seemed filled with molten fire.
He hurried along the dark street toward Broadway. The distant lights at the end of the street, where it joined Broadway, seemed to dance and whirl as he gazed upon them; and his senses began to be bewildered.
"I've drank too much," he muttered.—"If I can only reach Broadway, and get to my hotel, all will be right."
But when he reached Broadway, it whirled before him like a great sea of human faces, carriages, houses and flame, all madly confused, and rolling through and over each other.
The crowd gave way before him, as he staggered along.