Out of the shouting crowd, she ran after the horsemen--past the Rest House, through the mud-huts of the native quarter.... On she sped, the night filled with glory for her eyes.... Suddenly there was a shot--then four more--from ahead. Fear bound her limbs, and she struggled on--as in the horrid weights of an evil dream. TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER ROUTLEDGE, BROODING UPON THE MIGHTY SPECTACLE OF A JAPANESE BIVOUAC, TRACES A WORLD-WAR TO THE LEAK IN ONE MAN’S BRAIN Parting from Noreen Cardinegh on the Bund at Shanghai, Routledge walked back through the darkness to the German Inn far out on the Hankow road. He was not conscious of the streets, nor of time passed. Not a word he had spoken to the woman could he remember, but all that she had said recurred again and again. He was torn within. The wound was too deep for heavy pain at first--that would come later with the drawing-together--but he was dazed, weakened. He turned into the door of the hostelry and recalled that he had nothing to do there. He had engaged passage on the _Sungkiang_ for Chifu that afternoon. His baggage was aboard, and the ship lying on the water-front which he had left. He turned back, without any particular emotion at his absentmindedness, but he charged himself with an evil recklessness for tarrying on the Bund in the afternoon.... Finacune had seen him, and Noreen.... Jerry Cardinegh was still alive--lost to wars, lost to friends, but still alive. He was close to death, his brain probably already dead to big things, and he had not told! Noreen would never know. Routledge tried to be glad. All his praying, hiding, and suffering had been to save her from knowing. His lips formed a meaningless declarative sentence to the effect that he was glad; meaningless, because there was no sanction in his heart. He was ill and very weary. He wished it were time for the prophesied wound, and for Noreen to come to him. He was not powerful enough that moment, walking back to the Bund, to face the future, and hold the thought that he was to remain an outcast.... “She will come to me when Jerry is dead,” he repeated, and for the time he could not fight it.... He went aboard, forgetting dinner, and dropped upon his berth. The _Sungkiang_ put off, out into the river, and long afterward lifted to the big swell in the offing. These were but faint touches of consciousness. His mind held greater matters--the strength of her hand, the breath, the fragrance, the vehemence, the glory of the woman in the wintry dusk, as she rushed back to her work--the tearing tragedy of parting; again the pitiless mountains of separation.... Loose articles were banging about the floor; the pendent oil-lamp creaked with the pitching of the ship. It was after midnight. Routledge caught up the great frieze coat and went out on the main-deck. It was a cold ruffian of a night, but it restored his strength.