To leave the protection of Dyker and the kindly secrecy of the cab, and then to leap into a tide of alien human beings and swim against them in a strange and terrifying sea, had required the last grain of courage and strength that was left in Violet's sapped body and cowed soul. It was only by the momentum that Wesley's calm directions had given her, and quite without consciousness upon her own part that, with her cloak gripped tightly about her, she tottered forward, buffeted and shrinking, to the first corner, wheeled to the right into a street comfortingly darker, turned again into a still narrower and quieter way, and then came to an uncertain stop before what seemed to be no street at all, but only a small black rift among the beetling walls of brick. Empty as was the way compared with Rivington Street, it was what, had she not seen the former thoroughfare, she would have considered oppressively full. Urchins walked hand in hand along the gutters, push-cart men cried their wares over the cobbles and, in the hot night, frowzy women crowded the house-steps. A clatter of voices, of foreign tongues and unfamiliar forms of English, rattled out the gossip of the neighborhood, and a few steps away, a belated hurdy-gurdy shook forth a popular tune. Violet cowered against the nearest wall. She was uncertain as to how to proceed, and she was afraid to stand still. There seized her an unreasoned terror lest all this seeming escape might be some new trick leading into some new trap. A policeman passed with heavy tread, but, unmindful of Dyker's assurance, the girl drew, trembling, as far away from him as she could. Then, when her straining eyes saw him turn at the next corner to retrace his steps, she made sure that he was coming back to recapture her, and, now desperate, she faced a pair of solemn children slowly approaching from the opposite direction. The six-year-old boy to whom she especially addressed herself shook an uncomprehending head, but his wiser companion, a very dirty little girl of seven, made proud answer. "He don't to speak no English," she said. "He only can tell things out of Jewish. But I tells you. That there's your street right behind you. Yiss, ma'am. An' your house is by the two on that there side." Violet's lips tried to form a word of thanks. She turned, as the girl had ordered, into the rift among the brick walls, found that, once it had traveled beyond the depth of the house before which she had been standing, it opened to a width of a few additional feet, and so, almost creeping through the Stygian passage in which shone only one far-away lamp, she felt her way to the second door. It was partially open, and a jet of blue gas in the hallway burned overhead. She could see several doors in the shadows, but all were closed. She heard a dragging step coming down the stairs. She drew against the wall and waited.