‘Now cut it out!’

‘You didn’t even scream! You ran away … Gert, you ran away and left …!’

At the touch of the hand on his shoulder he jerked about in shock. He could not see Fred’s face but he smelled the man’s cigar odor.

‘I want to talk to you, Newman,’ Fred said, quietly.

Gertrude came around from behind him and stood facing him beside Fred. Both of them wanted to talk to him. He heard her saying it was all right, everything was all right, Fred just wanted to talk to him and apologize …

He could hear her calling to him peevishly as he walked. He knew he was walking but whether he had struck at Fred or not … he could not quite remember what had started him walking. Her excited calls became sparser, he kept on walking, and then it was quiet. Something soft brushed his ankle, and he stopped and picked up his coat off the curb, and turning the corner, put it on.

The parkway was as dark as if it were three o’clock in the morning. He was picking up a good stride against the wind which creaked in the stiff branches of the trees over his head. The wind stung his face like soap on a skin cut, and the pain swelled his chest as he walked, and he became aware of all the strength he had left in him. His eyes seemed to be open very wide and he devoured the dark with them, feeling a wild desire to be challenged. Remembering how he had tried to wave them away from him toward the store he stiffened with disgust and demanded that attackers confront him at the next tree … or the next … How he would land one on that man who had snotted onto the street! Attack, it was necessary to attack. Oh, God, if they would come at him now! If he could fight until his arms fell off …!

Seeing the lights of the subway station he slowed, gratified that he had walked the distance between two subway stops without knowing. An honest five minutes. A kind of proof, he felt. The first five minutes he had ever spent unafraid.

He turned off the sidewalk and hurried across the parkway and continued up a sidestreet, studying the neighborhood in an effort to recall exactly how far he had to go. Remembering, he let his surroundings fade from his mind, and he thought of Gargan and the city. The city and the millions upon millions hiving all over it – and they were going mad. He saw it so clearly that it was hardly alarming, for what he understood he no longer feared. They were going mad. People were in asylums for being afraid that the sky would fall, and here were millions walking around as insane as anyone could be who feared the shape of a human face. They ….

A spasm of shivering took hold of him and he buttoned his coat collar but the chill would not go away. His teeth were beginning to chatter. The wind was searching for his body beneath his clothes and he hurried faster, and came to a corner and turned. A few yards from the corner he saw the green lamps beside the doorway and rushed up to the building and went in.