Mme. Petrovskey had come out from her room at the sound of their return. She approached Alexis stealthily. Her bulk cast a bloated shadow on the wall. It crouched over him like a beast of prey. "So you have let yourself be conquered by a nobody, an unloved waif? Fie, you are weak! You are allowing yourself to be dragged into a mediocrity more loathsome than death. That is not for you. You are a genius. Spread your wings, fly away before you lose all capacity to soar. Fly away! Your bird of paradise awaits you. Do such as you mate with the sparrows?" His mother's words, or his own subconscious mind? What matter? It voiced his weeping soul. CHAPTER XXV SACRIFICIAL The city was muffled in fog. It brooded over Fifth Avenue, oozing rain like an enormous sponge. Beneath its clammy drip, dirty snow melted into unwholesome puddles, street lamps haloed goldenly. It was after midnight and the broad, deserted pavement glistened like some dark river upon which a few rare craft slid by in ghostly procession. Occasional passers-by, beneath outspreading umbrellas, looked strangely fungoid. Their breath issuing in small clouds, seemed to congeal and solidify upon reaching the air as if the fog itself were composed of the warm emanations of mankind. Alexis hurried drearily up the avenue. With Claire safely installed in the apartment and companioned by a nurse, there was nothing further for him to do. He was free momentarily. Free to savor to the full the bitterness of the cup he had set to his lips. But the evening had left him numb as well as distraught. He was conscious only of an overmastering impulse to rush out into the streets, to drown identity in fog, lose self in some demoniac outburst. Huge gulps of the chill air in his lungs, he staggered forward as if propelled by a monster wind, eyes fixed in front of him, burning a path through the drizzling mist. An empty taxi glided close to the curb. He hailed it mechanically and gave the man Anne's address. A moment later they had joined the current on the black and glistening river. Of course, he would not disturb Anne. That would be sheer cruelty. But he must be near to her somehow. That was an exquisite torture which he was too weak to forego. Once there, he would dismiss his taxi and hug close to the wall which sheltered her. After that he had no plans. The future was not more dark nor indefinite than the immediate night before him. There was only one thing certain in his mind. He could not return to Gramercy Park. That was a grinning horror which his embryonic Quixotry was too feeble to face. A rapid transit up the avenue brought them to the shrouded park. They skirted its graveyard shore to the Seventies, and then swerved into Anne's street. As they neared the house Alexis smothered a cry of irritation. The façade was brilliant with lights. It shone luminous through the fog like the golden exit from a tunnel.