She turned abruptly and left the room. He stood thinking for a space; then he went out and crept down the stairway. As he passed the drawing-room door he saw Kate bending in front of the open curio cabinet. He crept down another flight to the first floor and hid himself behind a palm in an angle of the great hall. He strained his ears for trouble, ready to rush upstairs at the first sound. After a time a wand of light was thrust down the stairway. Then came Kate, the suit-case in one hand, feeling her way with the wand like a blind man with a cane. For a moment the searching light pierced through the palm into his face, and David thought he was discovered; but she glided on and down the basement stairs. He let several minutes pass; then he too slipped out into the street.
Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was the direction of the subconscious, that led David in his circuitous homeward journey, past St. Christopher's Mission. He was walking slowly along, the caution of the first part of his flight forgotten in the mixture of despair and shame that now possessed him, when he waded into pools of coloured light that lay upon the sidewalk and the street. He looked up. There, aglow with its inspiration, was the window to the memory of Philip Morton. He involuntarily stepped back a pace or two, and leaning against a stack of bricks designed for repairs in the Mission's basement, alone in the deserted street, he gazed steadfastly at the luminous words.
He had often looked at that tribute, as he had upon the whole Mission, with a sense of thankfulness that his life was counting. But now there was no thankfulness within him. Anger began to burn, revolt to rise. That sainted man there was the cause of all his misery, all his degradation. The shame of his trial, the loss of his four prison years, the refusal of work, his insults, his lost strength, his lost character, his ragged clothes, his starving, his uttermost poverty, his uttermost despair—all these rushed upon him in one hot turbulent flood of rebellion. Of all these inflictions that man was directly the cause! And more—that man had made him a thief! And yet that man was worshipped as a saint—while he, he was a starving outcast!
His resentment culminated in a wild impulse. His right hand clutched one of the bricks on which it rested, and he took a quick step forward. The brick crashed through Morton's glowing name.