Imitating the mind that is enclosed within a drowning body, it
gazed upon the wildly flitting pictures of the years that were gone.
Regent Street by night rose up before it. The doctor saw, painted upon
the background of the dense gloom in which they sat, the huge and vacant
thoroughfare in the last watch of the night. Faint figures wandered here
and there, or paused beneath the shadow of the tall blind houses,
assuming postures of fatigue or of leering and attentive evil. But one
moved onward steadily, scarcely glancing to the right or to the left. The
doctor's mind, watching, knew that this moving figure was himself, and,
as if with bodily eyes, he marked its course down the long vista of the
dim street until it passed into more private ways of the town. It passed
into more private ways, but not alone. A shadow followed it, and the face
of the shadow was turned away. The doctor could not see it, but there
rose in him the horror and the fear which had attacked him long ago, when
he turned to pursue the thing that dogged him in the darkness. And he saw
the shadow waver, pause, then turn to flee. And as it turned he thought
that it had the soul, though not the face, of the new Valentine. Then
suddenly a great anger against himself was born in him.
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