He walked quickly along a narrow passage into a dark lane. The lane was empty. So it appeared at first. But as Gypo stood hidden in the doorway of an old empty house, piercing the darkness with wild eyes, he heard a footstep. The footstep made him start. It was the first human footstep he had heard, the first sound of his fellow human beings, since he had become an informer and . . . and an outcast. Immediately he felt that the footstep was menacing, as if he were certain that it belonged to somebody that was tracking him. How strange! Within the course of ninety minutes the customary sound of a human footstep had, by some evil miracle, become menacing. Ninety minutes ago, his ears would not have challenged the sound of a human footstep, no more than they would have challenged the sound of the breath coming normally from his lungs. But now they pricked into attention at the trudging shuffle that approached from the left. His heart began to pant. Of course it was nobody of consequence. It was only a ragged old woman of ill fame, with a debauched face and melancholy eyes. She paused drunkenly in front of him, muttering something unintelligible. Then she bared her ragged teeth. She spat and passed on without speaking. Was it an omen? Gypo did not notice that it was. He merely listened to the sound of her footsteps, splashing carelessly through the pools. Then he looked ahead of him furtively and moved off with the careful listening, stooping movement of a man wandering alone at night in a forest gorge where lions are about. He turned a corner and came face to face with a blaze of light and a street with shops and crowds of people going about. At first he shuddered with fear. Then he swore and drew in a deep breath. What had he to fear? He knew the street well. Who was going to interfere with him? His giant fists clawed up, like talons enraged, and the muscles of his throat and shoulders stiffened. He imagined himself throttling these enemies who might be inclined to assault him. He felt comforted, reminded by this pressure of his muscles, of his enormous strength. He settled his little round hat jauntily on the back of his head. He stuck his hands in his trousers pockets. He swung his legs and rolled like a sailor out of the lane, arrogantly, into the glare of the street. At the same slow, swinging, rolling gait, he crossed the street through the traffic without pausing, without stepping aside, without looking to the right or to the left. Motor-cars, carts, bicycles and wagons swerved to avoid him. He went through them without looking at them, like a great monster walking through a cloud of ants, that are carrying on their futile and infinitesimal labours about his feet. They turned towards him to curse, but those that saw his face gaped and passed into the night with the curse unuttered. His face, with the humps on it shining in the glare of the lamps, was like a subtle mask. It was so . . . so dead.