Without Valentine what might he not have been? And the little doctor let his imagination run loose until his light eyes were dim with absurd tears. He winked them away as he turned into Regent Street. The hour was nearly two, and the great curved thoroughfare was rather deserted. Those few persons who were about had a curious aspect of wolves. Their eyes were watchful; their gait denoted a ghastly readiness for pause, for colloquy. Poor creatures! What was their _liaison_ with life? A thing like a cry for help in the dark. The doctor longed to be a miracle-worker, to lift up his hands, just there where he was by the New Gallery, and to say, "Be ye healed!" He had a true love for every human thing. And that love sometimes seared his heart, despite his fervent faith and hope. But now, as he pursued his way, a physical sensation intruded itself upon his mind, and gradually excluded all his reflections. A sense of bodily uneasiness came upon him, of a curious irritation and contempt, mingled with fear. He at first ascribed it to the coffee he had imprudently drunk at Valentine's flat, and to the strength of the two cigars he had smoked, or to some ordinary, trifling cause of diet. But by the time he crossed Oxford Street, and was in the desert of Vere Street, he felt that there was a reason for his distress, outside of him. "I am being followed," he said to himself. "I am being followed, and by some utterly abominable person." He went by the Chapel, and struck across to the right, not looking behind him, but analyzing his feelings. Being strongly intuitive, he had no need to turn his head. He knew now for certain the cause of his uneasiness. Some dreadful human being was very near to him, full of hateful thoughts, sinister recollections, possibly evil intentions. Something, the very vibrations of the night air, it might be, carried, as a telegraph wire conveys a message, the soul-aroma of this human being to the doctor. As he walked on, not hurrying, he mutely diagnosed the heart of this unseen being. It seemed full of deadly disease. Never had he suspected man or woman of such wickedness as he divined here; never had he felt from any of his kind such a sick repulsion as from this unseen monster who was journeying steadily in his steps. Doctor Levillier was puzzled at the depth of the horror which beleaguered him. He remembered once driving a staid, well-behaved horse in a country lane. The animal ambled forward at a gentle pace, flicking its ears lazily to circumvent the flies, apparently at ease with its driver and with the world. But suddenly it raised its head, drew the air into its distended nostrils, stopped, quivered in every limb, and then, with a strange cry, bolted like a mad thing. Far away a travelling menagerie was encamping. It had scented the wild animals.