“Quick, the door!”
Robert started toward the entrance. A white man barred the way. Robert pulled him to one side. The man raised his arm, but Freeman and McCall had sprung forward and were holding him helpless. The black man leaped through the doorway and to safety. McCall and Freeman ran after him, for to aid a Negro then was a crime in the eyes of the mob which hated blackness.
Robert started to follow. Something struck him on the forehead. The cries of the mob and the sound of their footsteps, a man’s laughter, the traffic clangs and noises, the far-off whistle of a patrolman, whirled about him. The world turned red and went spinning round and round—then black, in circles, closing, closing. A confused roar, fainter and ever fainter in his ears. A sensation of being carried, of floating, finally of resting.
Somewhere Robert presently was aware of a light, a flame that was at the same time himself. The flame grew outward and shattered into other flames. The light expanded, throbbing. He was running forward through a grotesquely flaring night, with lights and rockets that screamed overhead and exaggerated every irregularity of the ground, that sent ghastly shadows staggering across the field.
No. He was running down a football field with a leather ball tucked under his arm, a smell of earth and blood and leather in his nostrils and the roar of voices in his ears. No. He tried to remember and found that he was conscious. His eyes fluttered open. Eyes strangely familiar were resting on them.
“Where am I? What’s happened?”
Soft hands were patting him. He felt the pressure of a bandage around his head and a dull pain. He saw a doctor and a woman bending over him. He knew that he was in a hospital. He heard a familiar voice, the woman’s voice, consoling him.
“Robert, Robert, you’re all right now?”
There was a hum of voices. There were tears in her brown eyes. Oh, Dorothy! His heart was racing. Dorothy. No. Yes, it was Dorothy. Dorothy of the hospital. Dorothy who had wept once before, in Paris. Dorothy who had kissed him then. Yes. His head was clear. He raised himself to a sitting position.
She was holding his hand. His own eyes were wet.