On strode Barnabas, all unconscious, with his mind ever busied with
thoughts of Cleone and the sudden, unaccustomed doubt in himself and
his future that had come upon him.
Presently he turned off to the right along a dirty street of squalid,
tumble-down houses; a narrow, ill-lighted street which, though
comparatively quiet by day, now hummed with a dense and seething life.
Yes, a dark street this, with here and there a flickering lamp, that
served but to make the darkness visible, and here and there the
lighted window of some gin-shop, or drinking-cellar, whence
proceeded a mingled clamor of voices roaring the stave of some song,
or raised in fierce disputation.
On he went, past shambling figures indistinct in the dusk; past
figures that slunk furtively aside, or crouched to watch him from
the gloom of some doorway; past ragged creatures that stared,
haggard-eyed; past faces sad and faces evil that flitted by him in
the dark, or turned to scowl over hunching shoulders. Therefore
Barnabas gripped his stick the tighter as he strode along, suddenly
conscious of the stir and unseen movement in the fetid air about him,
of the murmur of voices, the desolate wailing of children, the noise
of drunken altercation, and all the sordid sounds that were part and
parcel of the place.
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